


le mal du pays

by shier



Category: iKON (Korea Band)
Genre: (sort of) character death, M/M, questionable take on the afterlife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-02 13:03:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11510007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shier/pseuds/shier
Summary: Yunhyeong meets Junhoe in the middle of a sticky summer’s day, the air hot with the scent of burning metal and underneath that, the cloying scent of butter. He’d heard about the accident via radio: a bus had rammed into a cafe, instantly killing diners out on the sidewalk.... or the one where Yunhyeong can see spirits.





	1. Chapter 1

Yunhyeong’s late. It’s never a good sign when he’s last to arrive at the scene of the accident. By then, the people have dissipated and he’s going to have a hell of a time trying to fix things that could’ve been avoided if he’d gotten there _early_. And he’s right—by the time he gets there, trying in vain to catch his breath, the ambulances have gathered in clusters and he has to fight through a thick crowd to be able to see the damage at all.

“… but the six car pile-up will mean the closure of this street,” floats in from behind him amongst the din. Yunhyeong glances behind him and spots a reporter speaking seriously into a camera. He stares; it’s not her that’s gotten his interest, it’s the teenaged girl standing next to the cameraman with red trickling down from her temple, as if a bloodied egg had been smashed there. “Businesses along the road will be interrupted. No deaths have been declared as of yet.”

 _No deaths_ , Yunhyeong echoes internally, just as the lady concludes her report and the man aims his camera down, flashing her a grin. “That’s good,” he says. Yunhyeong detects a hint of flirtation in his voice, and the teenaged girl must do, too, because her eyes dart over to the reporter’s face immediately.

“It’s horrible,” the reporter answers, though she’s looking away from him and towards the heap of twisted metal. Not once do they acknowledge the girl, even when she follows them to pack up to leave.

“No,” Yunhyeong says, taking the opportunity to dart forward as the crowds are beginning to leave, letting her run right through him. She gasps, repelled, snatching away like she’s been burned. “They can’t see you, you know.”

“I know,” the girl says, looking so devastatingly sad that Yunhyeong surmises that she must know them.

“And do you know why?”

“I’m dead,” she replies, glancing up to meet Yunhyeong’s eye defiantly, as if daring him to disagree, “right?”

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

He'd been fourteen when he saw something his friends couldn’t. At first, he hadn’t known what he was looking at; she resembled a flesh and blood human so much that he’d only realised his mistake when she turned to reveal the ugly gash that tore her cheek and neck open. He hadn’t panicked—it wasn’t the first time he’d heard stories like this, though he’d spent fourteen years being _sure_ that his family was pulling an elaborate prank—but he did leg it home in half the time to tell his mother what he’d seen.  

In those days, she’d still been young and quick and alert, that even though Yunhyeong had spun the story with a twist of disbelief and flailing gestures, she’d understood what had happened and told him not to call the ghost a _ghost_. “Would you like it if someone started calling you that?” she’d asked the next day when she walked him to school.

The bell had rung before Yunhyeong could find out what his mother was planning to do with the wandering spirit, but Yunhyeong never saw her again.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

The Songs never really talk about it—the _gift_ , the opening of the third eye. If it came, it came (like Eunjin) and if it didn’t, then it didn’t (like Chanwoo). Yunhyeong hadn’t known which end of the spectrum he fell on until he befriended a pale boy named Taehyun in his first week of high school.

“You can see _me_ ,” Taehyun said. It’s something Yunhyeong’s going to hear a million times in his life, but he’d laughed at it then, because it sounded like something out of a movie and because he could _see_. “Really? _Me_?”

Yunhyeong learned three things from that encounter. The first was that people were quick to judge him as odd when he spent a large amount of time talking to thin air; something he’s gotten monumentally better at disguising over the years. The second was that ghosts—the _stranded_ , Taehyun had sniffed, insisting that if he was to be damned eternally, he wanted some poeticism thrown into the mix—wouldn’t leave until Yunhyeong had fished their family bracelet out from behind the boilers or unearthed a bicycle stashed in a dusty corner or penned an apologetic letter to their best friend. And third, that it would hurt like hell when they _did_ go.

It wasn’t bad once he’d acclimatised to it. His mother had given him charms and hooked trinkets around his wrist, and his sister had given him tips on avoiding particularly tricky spirits. “Treat them like salesmen on the street,” she’d said, even though Yunhyeong had problems avoiding eye contact, just as he did with salesmen. One way or another, something would give him away. “You’re too _honest_ ,” she’d also say, as though the stranded wanted something more out of Yunhyeong than for him to help them remember why they couldn’t leave.

After Taehyun came the best friends, Hwasa and Wheein, and after _that_ came Yijeong, who Yunhyeong could hardly believe didn’t _die_ a student until he found newspaper clippings of the accident one block away, and then it was Jinhyeong and Hongseok and Jinah, so by the time Yunhyeong graduated, he was walking across the stage for the others who never did.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

Yunhyeong meets Junhoe in the middle of a sticky summer’s day, the air hot with the scent of burning metal and underneath that, the cloying scent of butter. He’d heard about the accident via radio: a bus had rammed into a cafe, instantly killing diners out on the sidewalk. He’d thrown away the tricky story he’d been trying to work out, grabbed his satchel, and flown straight out of the door. There’s really nothing worse than coaxing someone who’d been mid-meal that they were dead, and he didn’t want to be so late that it would become near impossible to explain why they couldn’t just go about their day.

Which is why his first assumption was that Junhoe was a particularly disgruntled spirit who didn’t have time to finish his chocolate croissant. “I’m not _dead_ ,” Junhoe says, spitting the word out with a particular viciousness that Yunhyeong’s immediate reaction is to feel sympathy for him. “They’re dead, but _I’m_ not dead.” He looks nervy, eyes darting all over the place, as though he was hyperaware of his surroundings and not at all like he’d recently been ripped out of his living body.

“Okay,” Yunhyeong says, because he’s prepared for _all_ eventualities. And if he’s being honest, this isn’t his first mix up. People usually just gave him a weird look and let him be. And people didn’t usually have a death grip on his arm while they urgently whispered, “But _they’re_ dead, right?”

They both glance over at the melee of people. It’s not hard to distinguish those that were meant to pass on to the great beyond, particularly in accidents like these. They were usually mangled, bones sticking out in ways that halloween costumes never got quite right.

“Sort of,” Yunhyeong says, sensing that Junhoe’s pretty new to all this, and being a mediator isn’t the same as, say, manning a cash register. It’s not like Yunhyeong can give him a crash course by pushing some buttons. “I’m here to help them.”

Junhoe snatches his hand back abruptly, turning to stare at Yunhyeong. “Are you— you know… I mean—“

“No,” Yunhyeong says, tamping down the urge to laugh. Next to him, Junhoe fidgets, uncomfortable. “Will you wait here for me?”

They get coffee afterwards where Yunhyeong worries that Junhoe’s suffering from some kind of shock. It’s understandable: being at a scene of an accident was doubly as traumatising when you saw more than dead bodies. But although Yunhyeong’s prepared for _all_ eventualities, no one ever told him what to do if he met someone like him who wasn’t a Song.

He eases into it the same way he does with everyone, living or dead: by asking after them first. But Junhoe doesn’t seem interested in any of Yunhyeong’s formalities and barrels right ahead with his interrogation. _Who are you? What do you do? How can you see them? What the hell is going on?_

“Probably the same thing as you,” Yunhyeong answers, after a beat, “I see spirits who can’t move on after they’ve died.” It’s strange, seeing the look of relief on Junhoe’s face, like watching a very intimate revelation that Yunhyeong probably wasn’t supposed to be privy to. “Car accidents usually create an influx of spirits. They don’t really know they’ve died, so you have to… prod them to move on.”

Junhoe waits until he realises that Yunhyeong isn’t going to add anything, then says, “Move on to  _where_?”

“I don’t know,” Yunhyeong confesses with an easy shrug. As far as he’s concerned, there’s another realm elsewhere that beats wandering in an undead limbo for eternity, and he tells Junhoe just as much.

“So you don’t think you’re…”—Junhoe hesitates, rubbing his thumb against his fingers; Yunhyeong wonders if he knows he has a nervous tick— “… crazy?”

“No,” Yunhyeong says, because he doesn’t know how to explain anything else in between. “You’re just…different.” It’s a cop-out, Yunhyeong knows; the truth was so much more complex than that, even if Yunhyeong's still trying to figure out what the truth looks like, but Junhoe’s face lights up like he’s been waiting to hear those words his whole damn life.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

After that day, Junhoe becomes something of a permanent fixture in his apartment and Yunhyeong learns a lot about him in that time span. A) He’s a high school graduate who hasn’t made it into college for approximately five years. B) He works at a supermarket near a church, says that it’s a quiet spot because the spirits liked congregating in the pews rather than between the aisles of instant ramyun and bottled water. C) He’d done a stint of treatment for a problem he never had. He probably hadn’t meant to say the last one, but it’d slipped out anyway, like a dirty secret, something to be embarrassed about.

It takes three more accidents and a wandering pizza delivery spirit stationed at Yunhyeong’s street for Junhoe to burst out and deal with her himself. Yunhyeong personally thinks it’s because Junhoe’s physically incapable of passing up a good argument (“You’re _dead_ ,” he’d screamed in her face—much to the alarm of all the passer-bys who’d assumed that he was yelling at Yunhyeong—to which she’d replied, “No, _you!_ ”).

They end up scouring the newspapers for information on her. Young adult. Female. Blonde dye job and a nasty snarl. Probably a mean right hook if it didn’t go straight through them. And they find a picture of her blown up across a quarter of the Sunday Times. She’s softer around the edges, her neck collared by some school’s uniform, smiling disinterestedly at the camera.

“Went missing on Friday night on the way home from her shift,” Junhoe reads, hunched over Yunhyeong’s laptop as he munches on some crackers. Yunhyeong’s snack purchases had gone up by two hundred percent since Junhoe’s arrival, but he didn’t mind. It was nice to have someone else around who could actually consume things. “Says here her trail went cold after she passed the park, and was never seen again.”

They look at each other, both _knowing_ the most likely outcome of the story, but neither wanting to say it. The spirit they knew, the one who yelled at Junhoe every time he tried to slip past her into Yunhyeong’s apartment, she didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d let herself be killed without a fight. And the thought of her getting _killed_ — “Can’t we just _ask_ her?” Junhoe questions, for the nth time.

“If she knew what happened to her, she wouldn’t be downstairs, trying to find an address that doesn’t exist,” Yunhyeong points out, his mind already whirring with all the possible ways he could tackle this issue. Murder victims were amongst the worst to deal with. They were wronged, _angry_ , and rightfully so, there was really nothing Yunhyeong could do for them besides easing them into making their peace. Sometimes he called the police tip line, if the case was still open and high-profile enough to have a tip line. Sometimes he sat down and talked to them for five hours under a tree that their childhood home used to be next to.

“It’s not fair,” Junhoe says mulishly, shutting down the laptop with a loud sigh. For a guy who claims he doesn’t give a shit about anything, he has a surprisingly stubborn sense of justice. “We should catch the guy. We could catch him, if we tried.”

“I’m not a detective,” Yunhyeong says patiently. But Junhoe has a determined look on his face that Yunhyeong’s never seen before, and he spends the rest of the day looking preoccupied and distracted.

But the pizza delivery spirit ("Soojung," Junhoe corrects him one time) stops turning up at Yunhyeong’s doorstep, and when he asks Junhoe about it the next time he comes around, Junhoe actually looked _embarrassed_. “I might have… exorcised her,” Junhoe mumbles, the tips of his ears reddening. If Yunhyeong was an open book, then Junhoe was the one that people read aloud.

“… how?” Yunhyeong asks, slightly afraid of the answer. Because god knows Junhoe might have taken a knife to someone else’s neck.

“We kinda just—“ Junhoe flapped his hands “—yelled at each other. And then she cried. A bit. And I. I just. I tried to pat her shoulder. And it went through. And then she stared at me and there was this _pop_. And then poof.”

“Poof?”

“Poof. She disappeared.” He gnaws at his lip, meeting Yunhyeong’s gaze for the first time since the beginning of their conversation. “Is that bad?”

“Sometimes they disappear out of surprise,” Yunhyeong says slowly, seriously, because he doesn’t want to mislead Junhoe, “so we’ll have to wait for a few days and see.” Neither of them say it, but it’s obvious why Junhoe takes to lurking in the coffee shop, the one where he’d complained that the coffee tasted of old dishwater, eyes fixed more on the pavement outside than on his laptop screen.

A day turns into three, and then a whole week has elapsed without Yunhyeong seeing her blonde mop of hair or the angry upturn of her mouth when she’s getting ready to yell at someone for walking right through her. “I kinda miss her, you know,” Junhoe says absent-mindedly, one night, just as they’re being kicked out of the coffee shop for lingering too long. After three days of hogging seats, the barista had taken to giving them dirty looks, though Junhoe doesn’t seem to have noticed at all.

Yunhyeong keeps quiet, zipping up his hoodie instead. He glances across the road and finds an old lady wandering in a dated pair of pajamas, and he sighs, wondering if he has the energy to deal with the kind of spirit still half-tied to her dying body today. Behind him, Junhoe adds, “She was the first one.”

“That you exorcised?” Yunhyeong asks, though he already knows the answer, having been on the receiving end of a detailed recounting of Junhoe’s life, minus the entire year he’d turned 15. “How does it feel?”

“No,” Junhoe says after a pause, sucking in a deep lungful of air. There’s a grin on his face that Yunhyeong’s never seen before—it’s a little crooked and Yunhyeong thinks, for the first time, that Junhoe’s a pretty handsome guy, that if he hadn’t been born with one eye trained on the undead, then he’d be someone with girls and boys lining up outside his door. “She’s the first one I’m not scared of. They’re not all terrifyingly dead with… with all this baggage they want you to handle.” His breath comes out white when he exhales, fading into thin air. “That’s… good.”

“What about Mr. Kang?” Yunhyeong asks. The old man had died of cancer in his bed and hadn’t been able to figure out why his neighbourhood looked so damn different.

“He. Was. Naked,” Junhoe punctuates, his grin disappearing to give Yunhyeong an incredulous once-over, as though Yunhyeong was a lost cause. “You need to go out more often, hyung. That’s not _normal_. And no—“ Junhoe waves a hand in Yunhyeong’s face as he starts crossing the road, as though returning to Yunhyeong’s apartment was the natural thing to do at ten-thirty on a Wednesday night “—I don’t wanna hear about what’s _abnormal_ to you.”

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

Soojung the pizza girl doesn’t return, but another spirit comes haunting. One that Junhoe sees before Yunhyeong does. One that’s flesh and blood, and a ghost in a different way entirely.

“Your friend?” Yunhyeong asks, when Junhoe stops dead in his tracks at the sight of an over-enthusiastic kid waving so hard in their direction that his frizzy hair seems to whip around him.

“ _Shit_ ,” Junhoe mumbles, swiftly turning around and walking off in the direction they came from. “Walk faster hyung, c’mon.”

“Isn't the store that way?” Yunhyeong tries, wondering if this was one of those times his ability to distinguish between the earthly and the supernatural had failed him. “What’s going on?”

“Just— _walk faster_ , alright?”

Junhoe doesn’t glance back, but Yunhyeong does and sees that the kid with the long hair had stopped waving, his arms pressed flat to his sides, more cardboard than man.

They end up at the train station again, Junhoe whipping around the first corner of a wall and pressing his back flat against the dirty paint job, chest heaving as though he’d been running a race. Yunhyeong figures his _you look like you’ve just seen a ghost_ joke wouldn’t be taken well, given that Junhoe has his eyes squeezed shut like he’s trying to block out the world around him, Yunhyeong included.

“He’s not my friend,” Junhoe puts in a few moments later, when the train rattling above them had come and gone several times. “He’s _not_ my friend.”

“Okay,” Yunhyeong says in his best placating voice, realising that even after spending all that time together, he still doesn’t know where to lay a hand on Junhoe’s trembling body. _Screw it_ , he thinks, wrapping an arm around Junhoe’s shoulders, half-expecting to be shoved away. But all he does is stiffen, and then folds in closer, exhaling slowly. “You don’t like most people, I get it.”

Yunhyeong doesn’t realise he’s been holding his breath until Junhoe chuckles dryly and says, “That’s a gross understatement, _especially_ when it comes to Kim fucking Jiwon.” He disentangles himself from Yunhyeong’s hold after that, straightening out his shirt, looking slightly embarrassed, as though he’d just spilled a drink down his front instead of running away from an actual person.

“Not a spirit then,” Yunhyeong questions with some relief.

Junhoe shakes his head as he looks at the big clock hanging over the station, the second hand ticking away the hours of the afternoon, and then adds, “Not any more.”

It happens like this: Junhoe wakes up one morning and finds his deceased uncle (the fun one, the one who’d bought him toy guns and plastic cars he could actually ride in and the mini-keyboard, but also the one who had overdosed when Junhoe turned twelve) traipsing across the kitchen like they hadn’t buried him three months ago. He freaks out. He tells his parents. They freak out, and Junhoe spends the rest of his youth ferrying in and out of the offices of child psychiatrists and later on, priests, whose claims to fame were elaborate exorcisms that involved dousing him in oil.

“It isn't as bad as it sounds,” Junhoe says, licking on the ice-pop Yunhyeong had bought him in an attempt to coax the story out of him, as though he hadn’t described a childhood that contrasted Yunhyeong’s own entirely, that wasn’t the picture of a nightmare from Yunhyeong’s youth, when he used to mull over the question of being born to the right parents. “He stuck around and helped me through a couple of exams. Then they checked me into the hospital and I never saw him again.”

He has a tendency of doing that, Yunhyeong realises, downplaying horror stories by playing them out like horror _stories_. A quick anecdote over dinner—hey, I told my parents that I could see ghosts and they drugged me up on enough medication that on some days, I forgot my own name—one that seemed to come to him with relative ease, though Yunhyeong knows he’s never told another soul in his life.

"I met someone there," Junhoe says, and though his tone had been light and playful the entire time, his eyebrows betray him by furrowing just the slightest. "Song Minho. The kinda kid you knew was getting into trouble at the back of school because he was smoking. But only in dramas. Not that I've watched any."

"Uh-huh," Yunhyeong answers, refraining from mentioning how quickly Junhoe had glued himself to Yunhyeong's laptop.

"He didn't seem real. Always going around in the stupid, dirty jean jacket. Fucking badges all the way up front." Junhoe gestures at his chest. "Stupid grin. He had a _mullet_. But I was also pretty drugged up. So." When he shrugs this time, Yunhyeong squeezes his shoulder gently. "He'd look normal one moment, and then he'd turn his face and there's this long bloody…thing on the side of his face. Smashed to ruins. I… He found out I could see him. And then he introduced me to Jiwon."

They'd been in the same car when it crashed. It's the same old story: someone dies and someone else attempts to keep on living. It's nothing Yunhyeong hasn't seen before. It's the same old story: he convinces both the living and the dead to move on.

"I didn't want to, at first, but he was so goddamn persistent it drove me _crazy_. Crazier than I thought I already was." The laugh that emits from Junhoe is dry as he kicks his heavy boot against the asphalt, trying to chase some memory that he'd probably run from in the first place. "The worst part was when Minho fucking upped and left and I knew—I just fucking _knew_ —that every time Jiwon looked at me…"

"… it's not you he's seeing," Yunhyeong chimes in.

"No shit," Junhoe murmurs, watching his ice pop melt before dropping it to the ground.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

Junhoe deals with Jiwon's appearance by pretending he doesn't have a job and therefore doesn't have a problem. Instead, he stays holed up in Yunhyeong's apartment, taking to cleaning things up and bluntly resisting any and all of Yunhyeong's attempts to help him. It's the closest they've ever come to fighting; Junhoe's despair mixing in with Yunhyeong's frustration over not being able to _do_ anything, not even in the slightest, that would result in Junhoe moving on in some form or another.

"Time heals all wounds," Junhoe says, having, for some reason or another, adopted a weirdly zen attitude towards it all. "In ten years’ time, I won't even remember their names."

"Because you've repressed it all," Yunhyeong murmurs under his breath, listlessly editing his latest piece of writing—a bastardised human interest story on the pizza girl because even ghost whisperers have to earn an income in some way.

"And is that really so bad? Maybe we're looking at repression all wrong," Junhoe demands, after a pause, with that lilt in his voice that tells Yunhyeong that he's not going to get much work done today. "No, I've got a theory, listen to me, hyung—"

"I'm listening," Yunhyeong sighs and saves his work so he can turn his attention to Junhoe. Their days seem to have blended together like this—Junhoe picking meals out of Yunhyeong's repertoire of recipes and then having an argument over dinner over Junhoe's Interest Of The Day. It seemed like he was trying to cram a lifetime worth of conversations in a day, a week, a month, a year, and Yunhyeong was only too glad to have living company.

The day they meet Hanbin is no different.

"At least come out for lunch if you don't wanna go to work. Hangang park. That's nowhere near the store, right?" Yunhyeong had coaxed, though he knows that Junhoe only eventually agrees to go because he's starting to learn to pick his battles. It's a warm day. The kind of day that led moms to take their shrieking children out for a misguided bike ride. The kind of day that, apparently, leads to Junhoe turning his nose up at a figure pacing the bridge, decked out all in white.

"I don't like jumpers," he says, the same way someone might say _I'm allergic to peanuts_. "You're dealing with this alone, I'm gonna go rent us a bike."

Hanbin paces like he's trying to wear a groove into the stone ground, pausing for a few seconds at the railing to look over the still waters, and then pacing again. Yunhyeong's seen his type before, the ones trapped in an eternal moment of _will I, won't I_.

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" Yunhyeong starts, wearing the brightest smile he can muster. When the he doesn't seem to hear, Yunhyeong repeats the question again, startling the man out of his reverie. "What's your name?"

There's a pause, a grimace, almost, and then: "Hanbin. Don't mind me. I was just…"

"Taking a walk?" Yunhyeong supplies helpfully, moving closer and closer and closer, taking in how young Hanbin looks, how painfully lost.

"Yeah," Hanbin says, nodding slowly. "Thanks. I was taking a walk. Don't know how I got here. I was supposed to do something. Important." And then, as if seeing Yunhyeong for the first time, Hanbin's eyes widen and he smiles, awkwardly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to take up your time. I'm sure you're busy."

"No," Yunhyeong says, glancing back to find Junhoe by the rack of bicycles, and then wears his cheeriest smile when he says, "I'm Yunhyeong. Let me help you, okay?"

Junhoe's entirely nonplussed about Hanbin's existence ("But why does he have to come _with_ us?") but there's nothing Yunhyeong can do to placate him anyway. Unlike the other spirits chasing a trail with no destination, Hanbin keeps trying to remember who he is, where he is, where he's _going_ and it just didn't seem right to simply ditch him by the river as the sun set.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Yunhyeong asks, watching Hanbin watch the subway train fly past, mouth slightly agog like he'd never seen it before.

"Meeting you, at the river," Hanbin answers, as if snapping from a reverie, his gaze meeting Yunhyeong's. It's not the dead-eyed look he's seen so many times on other spirits, the kind of look that told him the occupant was long gone, all echo and no soul. Hanbin's here. Hanbin's seeing Yunhyeong. Hanbin's _registering_ Yunhyeong.

"And anything before that?"

"There's a wall," Hanbin says, "every time I try to scale it, I end up at the bottom again."

"It's okay," Yunhyeong says, defiantly ignoring the way Junhoe rolls his eyes, "we've got time."

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

If Yunhyeong's being honest, this is entirely uncharted territory. He watches Junhoe and Hanbin play cards like it's a scene out of his dreams, something not quite real or transient, something no one else can confirm—here's one boy with too much history and the other with a completely blank slate, with Yunhyeong somewhere in between. They didn't even have to tell Hanbin that he's no longer flesh and blood. He'd watched his hand go through Yunhyeong's wrist like it was a fucked up magic trick, and then watched his hand go through Junhoe's chest like he wanted to throw up.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" Hanbin had asked. His voice had been strangely calm despite the sickly green shade of his face. "I'm dead. I'm—"

"A ghost," Junhoe had cut in, shooting Yunhyeong A Look, "it's not a big deal. Plenty of people are ghosts. I mean. Everyone dies. I _mean_ —"

"I think he gets what you mean," Yunhyeong had said, patting Junhoe on the shoulder to shut him up, more afraid that Hanbin was going to _poof_ away and forget that he'd met the both of them entirely. "We're here to help you move on."

"Move on?" Hanbin had echoed, pressing a hand to his chest as if to say _but I'm right here_.

"Yeah, we're going to find whatever's keeping you here," Yunhyeong had said, wearing his best customer service smile, "and we're going to fix it."

It's unnerving, the way Hanbin had looked at him after that, with an oxymoronic mixture of uncertainty and trust. Like he didn’t think there was anything to fix, but that Yunhyeong would do it anyway. He feels the weight of it tug him down, the burden of promise to untie the last knot that held someone down onto this earth. _I don't know what I'm doing_ , Yunhyeong wants to confess, but he hears Junhoe speak first, an assured, "Yunhyeong hyung's good at it. Don't worry," and he wonders if he died, Junhoe would be why he can't move on too.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

"There's not one fucking thing," Junhoe declares on the Saturday they finally finish sifting through news articles for any word on Hanbin's death. Teenaged boy jumps. Banpo bridge suicide. _Nothing_. "Are you really dead?"

Hanbin doesn't help either—he paces, back and forth and back and forth, looking out of Yunhyeong's window once in a while, looking exactly like how Yunhyeong had initially found him. It's almost hypnotising, how _real_ Hanbin looks, as if Yunhyeong could just get up and touch him on the shoulder. He's reminded of Nam Taehyun from all those years ago; if only it was be as easy as finding a bracelet from behind the boilers. But Yunhyeong gets it. It can't be fun trying to guess how you'd chosen to end your life when you can't remember why you'd wanted to do it in the first place.

"Yeah, pretty sure," Hanbin says, shooting Yunhyeong a playful look as he sits down on the couch and places a hand on Junhoe's thigh that goes straight through him.

Junhoe lets something like a shriek out, squeezing away to the side of the couch, laptop hanging dangerously from his lap. "Don't fucking do that, asshole, what the _fuck_."

"What kind of ghost whisperer are you?"

"A delicate one," Junhoe insists, eyebrows furrowing like they're trying to get away from Hanbin too.

Laughing, Yunhyeong says, "Come on now, don't fight," and they both stare up at him in surprise. "What, is there something on my face?"

There's a pause as Hanbin and Junhoe both look at each other, some sort of common understanding passing between them that Yunhyeong's not privy to, and then Junhoe says, "That's such a _you_ -line that I couldn't mock you better even if I tried."

"Hey!" Yunhyeong protests, feeling, for some reason, equal parts relieved and indignant. "What does that mean?"

"You're an old man, hyung," Junhoe says with a loud, long-suffering sigh that he had no right to exercise. If anything, it's Yunhyeong who should be sighing. He'd spent the past three days trying to mediate fights between Hanbin and Junhoe, who got along like two kids in a playground who barely tolerated each other in front of the teacher.

So maybe Junhoe's surprisingly accurate.

"Keep searching," Yunhyeong nags, thumbing over his iPad at the scans of newspapers he'd unearthed from other cities. It's not a far stretch to say that Hanbin might not be from Seoul, given that he doesn't remember anything himself.

"There's _nothing_ ," Junhoe protests, the whine evident in his voice. He twists around, so his laptop screen faces the other two. "Here, see. The only recent jumper reported is a man in his 30s, so that's obviously out." Yunhyeong leans around Hanbin, careful not to touch him, and scrolls through the article Junhoe had found. No details given, no confirmed death.

"Is this all you guys have to go off on? Articles? What if it isn't reported?" Hanbin asks, eyes transfixed on the screen.

"Then tough shit," Junhoe answers. He's not wrong—there's not a lot either of them can go off on. Usually, the spirits were stuck in a visibly undoable loop. Sometimes, like Soojung the pizza girl, things work out in ways that Yunhyeong can't possibly predict. What he has certainty in is things working out, regardless of how long it takes.

Hanbin looks between the two of them like he's not sure whether or not they're pulling his leg, and asks, "So in this time… I'm free to go where I want?"

"We don't know the rules," Yunhyeong says, careful, slow, mindful of the spirits that turn vengeful, frustrated and angry that the universe had forgotten them, "it's as much your guess as mine. But I'd say the answer is yes. There's no reason why you can't. Some places…they might block you out, but what I know is that you wouldn't realise it's even there in the first place."

"It's usually where people die," Junhoe adds, flippantly, tacking on a loud _what?_ when Yunhyeong glares at him.

"Usually where bad memories occur, yes," Yunhyeong corrects, "call it a sense of self-preservation—"

"—a _delayed_ sense of self-preservation—"

Yunhyeong pauses and sighs, wondering if it's better or worse that Junhoe didn't seem to want to shut down around Hanbin like he did around other spirits. Or other people, come to think of it. "Yes. That. Your body learns and your body's instincts protects you from what's fatal."

"Except it's too late," Hanbin points out.

"Except it's too late," Junhoe agrees.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

Despite his questions about whether or not he can leave, Hanbin doesn't seem to want to go anywhere except to wander through Yunhyeong's things, projecting a version of it up for himself, gawking at them, and then setting them down again. He tries not to stare—figuring that if Hanbin's leaving him to his own business (as much as that can be, considering that Hanbin's peering curiously at Yunhyeong's phone now) then he can offer him the same in return.

They grab dinner, afterwards. Or, Yunhyeong grabs dinner, and Hanbin spends the whole time trying to eat food.

"Tastes like chicken," he announces, after one bite of the kimbap.

"Someone told me it tastes like a strawberry slushie," Yunhyeong recalls, thinking of the teenaged girl who'd shyly bunked up with him for several days until she remembered that she was supposed to have met her mother at a train station. He'd waited for her while she cried over a pile of memorial flowers, gifts, a stack of her favourite manhwa, waited while realisation clicked into place with her, and then gone with her to say goodbye, looking every bit like a suspicious guy in a hoodie, loitering around an old neighbourhood.

"Maybe it's like The Matrix," Hanbin suggests, the kimbap disappearing beyond his lips. It has weight, that much is sure, his cheek puffing up as he speaks.

"The Matrix?" Yunhyeong pauses around a mouthful of chopstick to consider this, and then shakes his head.

"The movie, hyung. You've never seen it? Guy exits reality and wakes up in the real world? No?"

"Not really a movie person."

"We've got to watch it then," Hanbin insists, his eyes lighting up in a way that startles Yunhyeong. Instinct tells him to tread carefully, but he doesn't know _why_ so he just nods, shoving more rice into his mouth.

"You can't remember anything about your life, but you remember this?"

"Maybe I was an aspiring filmmaker," Hanbin suggests, though he doesn't sound like he takes much stock in that speculation, and Yunhyeong knows that trusting a spirit's instincts was usually the quickest path to absolution. "With posters hung up instead of wallpaper."

"You never know." It's an offhanded comment, something he hadn't thought about when he'd said it, but silence falls and Yunhyeong glances over to find Hanbin staring at him. Logically, he knows that Hanbin doesn't exist in the same plane as him. Not really. Not quite. But the light from the screen casts his face aglow anyway, the infinite space set in between them seemed inconsequential, like Yunhyeong could reach over and Hanbin would be solid. Not quite dead yet.

"I could really be anyone, huh?" Hanbin says, quiet, something like remorse in his voice. Yunhyeong has Questions but he bites his tongue, wishing not for the first time that he could offer some measure of physical comfort.

"Almost anyone, sure," Yunhyeong answers, "calling my doubts on president." It's the kind of joke that would've earned a roll of his eyes from Junhoe, but Hanbin laughs, head thrown back against the couch, the weight of it not quite depressing the cushions. His shirt shifts and for the first time, Yunhyeong sees the tail of a tattoo peeking out and—

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

 _—stop_. He opens his eyes and sees a fan whirring quietly overhead. "So this is what it looks like," comes a voice from his left, and Yunhyeong sits up, quick as lightning. This isn't the first time this'd happened—after Yijeong, there had been a nameless woman who would pop into his room sometimes. But this wasn't her. This one's small, a shadow in the corner of his room. If he rubs his eyes and squints, he thinks he can make out her edges. Real. Sort of real. Probably kind of real.

"Who are you?" He sits up, accidentally knocking his math textbook he'd been studying from off his bed. It hits the ground with a loud clatter and this time when Yunhyeong opens his eyes again, he's met with a blank ceiling and the faint thrum of the air conditioning struggling in the middle of summer. Just a dream, then. Sort of a dream. Probably kind of a dream.

It's hard to go back to sleep after that so he swings his legs off the bed and shuffles out to the kitchen. He can hear Junhoe snoring in the other room, his door swung wide open. Even the sound of water pouring into Yunhyeong's glass doesn't mute the sound of his rumbling.

When he turns around again, he catches Hanbin standing by an open window that Yunhyeong has no recollection of opening. Huh.

"Can't sleep?" Yunhyeong jokes, setting his glass down and moving to stand next to Hanbin, careful not to touch him.

"I _did_ try," Hanbin answers, rubbing the side of his face as he turns to look at Yunhyeong again. "Get horizontal and close my eyes for a second or two, and every time I think I'm asleep, I wake up on the bridge again."

"Do you miss it?" Yunhyeong asks, propping an elbow up on the ledge so he can rest his chin on his palm when he looks at Hanbin. "Being alive."

"The novelty of being a ghost _does_ wear off pretty fucking quickly." Hanbin laughs a little, looking down at his feet, now sticking out of the window, hanging in mid-air. "I just… miss knowing things. Even though I probably chose this for myself, right?"

"It could’ve been an accident, or a—"

"I wanted to jump, on that bridge. Whenever I'm back there, there's a… a yawning hole below me and it tells me that if I freefall, I'll end up somewhere good eventually. Hopefully."

Yunhyeong quiets, pressing his lips together. He should have something to say right now, something reassuring, something like _what's meant to be will be_. But he comes up short and Hanbin shakes his head instead.

"And I miss touching people. It feels so weird to have Junhoe and… and you around me all the time and I don't know what you _smell_ like or how warm you are or… It's lonely. It's so fucking lonely."

"Don't get all serial killer on me now," Yunhyeong says, though he sticks a hand out and turns it palm-side up. He understands what it feels like, too, standing next to someone who’s crying and not even being able to wrap his arms around them, offer them the basest of comforts.

Hanbin rolls his eyes the way Junhoe does, snorting a little as his palm hovers over Yunhyeong's. "Wow, how thrilling, so comforting."

“What does it feel like?" he asks, and there must be something in his voice because Hanbin stares at him for a quick second, his palm pressing in closely enough that he can barely discern the gap.

"... A really long dream," Hanbin says slowly, watching Yunhyeong spread his fingers for Hanbin to slot his through. If he closes his eyes, Hanbin's both there and gone. "Patchy. Confusing. I end up in weird places and I’m doing something I don’t remember starting.” His voice is tinged with a little frustration as he stands there with the heel of his hand pressed to his face. “But spending time with you and Junhoe helps."

"Then what should you say?" Yunhyeong teases as he opens his eyes again. He thinks he sees something moving in the corner of the room, but it's also two in the fucking morning, so he gives himself the benefit of the doubt and ignores it.

"Thanks, hyung," Hanbin says, and though his voice is dripping with mocking condescension, the little grin on his face says otherwise.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

He doesn't know when his streak of bad luck starts, but Yunhyeong becomes aware of it when he finds himself in the ER with a mild concussion from a falling object on his way out of his editor's office.

"You could've died," the doctor tells him and Junhoe, who'd come to pick him up, shoots him a glare like Yunhyeong had asked for this to happen. "Just a storey or two higher—"

"Does he need to be hospitalised?" Junhoe questions. He'd looked nervy from the second Yunhyeong had seen him, his face pallid and his tone watery, like he was about to throw up all over his cashier's apron from work. That, or Yunhyeong's mind's playing tricks on him—he doesn't think he's a good judge of things when he blinks and sees double.

The doctor says something garbled that Yunhyeong can't make out and his face shifts, features rearranging into an echo. Someone else from another time. And suddenly he's Hanbin. Hanbin in glasses and a white coat and a neat tie, his hair greying at the temples and he's saying something to Yunhyeong, something important—

"Hyung, c'mon, let's go collect your medicine."

"Are we… Are we done here? But—Hanbin—"

"Hanbin's worried sick about you but he can't enter the hospital compound," Junhoe explains, his tone so brisk and curt and cutting that Yunhyeong wants to ask him if he's alright. If everything's alright. But his thoughts seem to fray, forcing him to chase one end of a rope only for it to splinter into a million different threads. "You look like shit. Jiwon—"

Another voice washes over Yunhyeong, another familiar face. "I told you you'd need me to come along."

"Are you gonna help or talk shit the whole time?" Junhoe questions. He's pushing onto Yunhyeong's arm, his grip tight and painful, and the next thing Yunhyeong knows, he's in a cab, the smell of leather permeating the space they're in. He glances to his right and Junhoe's staring at him intensely, like Yunhyeong's grown a third head. It feels a little like he's trying to grow a third head, with the incessant pounding at the base of his skull, every thud echoing his own heartbeat. Everything seems too loud and too bright and there's a raspy voice coming from somewhere in front of him: _to treat a mild concussion, you apply ice to reduce swelling_ —

He doesn't usually dream, but this time he does. He's walking on water, dark and wide and it should be foreboding, but he's strangely unafraid. There's a woman next to him—tall, more silhouette than person, and when she speaks, the cadence of her voice is familiar, like something out of a distant memory.

"Aren't you tired of this?" she asks. Her hand doesn't exactly curl around his arm, but he feels it anyway. "A life lived in negatives. A whole made out of empty spaces."

"No," he says, his voice fuzzy to his own ears.

"It's bad luck, you know, to be the sin-eater." When Yunhyeong turns to look at her, something like fear settles in his gut for the first time in a while. "To absolve someone else of their burdens and take it for yourself. Aren't you scared?"

But he knows the answer and he repeats it again, firmly: " _No_."

He wakes up to the sound of an alarm blaring in the room, loud and obnoxious. It hurts to even try to _blink_ , so Yunhyeong groans and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to remember what the hell he'd done to land himself in this predicament. But thinking too hard causes his stomach to churn and if moving didn't scare him so much, he'd get up to hurl all over the floor.

"Want me to call Junhoe?" comes Hanbin's voice from his right, and Yunhyeong's eyes snap open to find the image of Hanbin in his armchair, folded up with a book in hand. _Flowers_ , the cover announces with no other details, blending easily into the white of Hanbin's shirt. "I'll have to warn you that he's arguing with that Jiwon guy out there, though."

"Jiwon?" Yunhyeong echoes dryly, licking his chapped lips. "Kim Jiwon?"

"Yeah. Buff guy, buzzed hair? Bunny teeth. Has that whole kicked puppy look going on." Hanbin raises his eyes from his book to look at Yunhyeong, and even at this distance it's easy to make out the worried crease of his eyebrows, the small frown on his lips. "You know him?"

"I've heard of—" a loud _bang_ sounds from behind Yunhyeong's closed door "—him before." They exchange a look, though Hanbin's expression betrays nothing. "Should I be concerned?"

"You should rest," Hanbin says. There's something steely in his tone that Yunhyeong can't quite make out, that he could swear he's heard before, for some reason. But then his expression softens and he slides his legs onto the floor without quite touching it, sauntering over to Yunhyeong's bed to sit on the very edge of it. "… want me to read this to you?"

The next moment, Hanbin's seated against the wall in the space next to him, still careful to leave an inch of space between them. His voice is soft, melodious, and it's dark enough that Yunhyeong doesn't have to close his eyes to feel like he has. He can make out the line of Hanbin's hands, not quite reflecting the light outside of the window, like dark shapes melting and shifting when he flips a page, and then another and another.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

Kim Jiwon's shyer than Yunhyeong had anticipated, all eye smiles and fidgety hands, pressed tightly in his lap. He's on Song Yunhyeong duty on Day Three, post-concussion, when Junhoe has no choice but to go to work and Hanbin had, according to Junhoe, gotten bored of watching Yunhyeong sleep.

"It's a lie," Hanbin says easily, appearing the second Junhoe steps out of the door, "he just wants you to meet this kid," just as Jiwon says, "I'm Kim Jiwon—but you know that already."

"Yeah," Yunhyeong says, trying for an easy smile, even though he has a million questions and Junhoe had been strangely elusive these past few days, "I've heard a lot about you."

Jiwon's face brightens up and dims down all at once and he asks, "Good things?"

"Only the best," Yunhyeong answers reassuringly, moving around the kitchen to grab a drink of water. He didn't seem so bad, not at all the boy of Junhoe's nightmares. And if they were getting along now—or, if Junhoe's version is to be trusted, Jiwon just turns up at his workplace and refuses to leave—then Yunhyeong should probably do something by way of being friendly. "Want something to drink? I have orange jui—"

"Junhoe finished it this morning," Hanbin pipes in a little lazily, circling around Jiwon as though he was something to be suspicious of.

"… I have water. And, uh—" Yunhyeong pauses to rummage around in his surprisingly well-stocked fridge "—cola?"

"Just water's fine," Jiwon says, walking straight through Hanbin, who makes a little noise of surprise, and straight towards Yunhyeong to pluck the glass out of his hands. "And I'll fill this up myself. I'm under strict instructions that you should be on bedrest."

"I'm _fine_ ," Yunhyeong insists, curling an arm to flex his muscles. Behind Jiwon, Hanbin snorts loudly, though the grin on his face is wide and undisputedly amused. "See? I'm on two legs. Haven't fainted once. You don't even need to be here, really." The smile on Jiwon's face falls and Yunhyeong backpedals furiously. "But it'll be good. To, uh, have someone watch me. I guess. In case Junhoe—"

"—flips his shit?" Jiwon offers, rubbing a hand over the top of his scalp, against the fuzz of his hair, looking down at his feet with a small grin of his own. _Crap_ , Yunhyeong thinks, and then shakes his head.

"Yeah. That. We'll never hear the end of it if he gets started," Yunhyeong agrees with a decisive nod. Jiwon's cute when he laughs, teeth jutting out and eyes crinkling up, looking 10 years younger than he did just seconds ago. Yunhyeong lets him demonstrate a bunch of soccer games on his laptop, lets himself lose a few rounds to Jiwon. And then they catch a daytime soap opera in amicable silence with Yunhyeong flanked on one side by Jiwon, and on the other by Hanbin.

"He reminds me of Junhoe," Yunhyeong tells Hanbin, getting up so he can get a blanket to cover Jiwon after he’s falls asleep during the commercial break.

"I don't see why he has to be here," Hanbin complains from his seat. "You guys can meet another time. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of you."

"You know how he gets when he's dead set on an idea," Yunhyeong answers, unfolding a neat square of blanket to tuck it around Jiwon's shoulders, careful not to wake him. In response, Jiwon sniffs and rubs his nose, murmuring something indistinct as he flips over and curls up on the couch. "You'd have better luck squeezing water from a rock." When he looks up again, Hanbin's staring at him silently, expression bordering just slightly on pinched. "What?"

"I—" Hanbin says, "I think—" And then, as if he was snatched out of thin air, Hanbin disappears.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

"If I tell you something," Hanbin announces a full day later, materialising in the centre of Yunhyeong's kitchen in a way that Yunhyeong will _never_ get used to, "will you promise not to tell Junhoe?"

"Where have you been?" Yunhyeong asks. He's editing the last page of his new piece, given that Junhoe had effectively placed him on house arrest. _It's not safe to go out_ , he'd said, like Yunhyeong wasn't a grown adult who'd spent most of his life looking after himself. But he figures he'll wait out Junhoe's irrational fears rather than fight him on it.

"I think you should know. There's this… spirit," Hanbin starts to explain, looking warily at Yunhyeong. He's lying, Yunhyeong can tell from the way his eyes dart from Yunhyeong's eyes to somewhere behind him, flustered. "She's the one responsible for your concussion. Don't look at me like that—Junhoe's the one who negotiated the deal with her. I'm not supposed to tell you this."

His thoughts jump to every story his sister and mother had ever told him about deals with the undead. Primarily about how much they'd wreck your life. "But—"

"No buts, hyung. Listen to me in case I disappear again. He negotiated this deal with her so she would quit hunting you down."

" _But_ —"

"And it'll ruin him to know that you know. He's… he…" Hanbin flounders for a second, starting to pace without quite touching the ground. "He said she told him it's bad luck to hang out with the likes of us. Ghosts. That our energies were non-compatible and that you, hyung, you were fucking up the yin or the yang or whatever it was. To make it right again, she had to, y'know, drop a pot on you. Nearly kill you at rush hour. Conspire with the universe to put soap in your goddamn soup. Whatever the hell else happened that week."

"Hanbin, you're not making _sense_."

"And Junhoe, he saw her at the hospital that day. The day you were concussed and out of it, and I couldn't walk past the fucking hospital grounds no matter how many times I tried. He said she was pretty—" Hanbin laughs "—can you believe it? I asked him who she was and he told me she's _pretty_." This time, Yunhyeong doesn't bother to interject during the pause, realising that it's Hanbin's way of trying to communicate something he didn't know how to get across. "But she… I guess you would call her a… a vengeful ghost. Too long spent as a spirit, too long spent dwelling in limbo. And he didn't want me to tell you. Said that he could handle it all on his own."

Something like dread claws its way up Yunhyeong's stomach to his throat. He's heard it a million times before— _I'm sorry to tell you this, but_ —and he'd always thought that when the time came, he'd be able to accept it. Everyone dies. So why did it feel like a punch to the gut?

"Fifteen years," Hanbin finally blurts out, chewing away at his lips as he watches Yunhyeong apprehensively, "he gave up fifteen years of his life. Thought it was a fair deal if she would leave you the hell alone."

"No," Yunhyeong cuts in laughingly, nervously, " _Hanbin_." The dread turns ice cold and Yunhyeong feels like he's going to throw up right into the sink. He wants to run over and grab Hanbin, wants to shake him like he's a magic 8-ball with a different answer every time.

"I just…" Hanbin says carefully, "I told you so you knew. That his fear wasn't irrational. That he isn't—fucked in the head. Not _that_ fucked in the head, anyway. He's—" They're interrupted with the cheery sound of Yunhyeong's phone buzzing, an EDM rendition of a Michael Jackson song that Junhoe had downloaded for him. "Don't say anything to him." Yunhyeong swipes his thumb over the green circle and hits loudspeaker, letting Junhoe's voice fill up the room.

" _You're alive! I thought you'd be asleep. Listen, I started thinking about barbecue and I wanted to go out to dinner. You and me? Maybe Jiwon?_ " Hanbin makes a series of hand gestures that Yunhyeong can't even begin to interpret, though that might have something to do with the clenching feeling in his chest rather than Hanbin's charade capabilities. " _Hyung?_ "

"My treat," Yunhyeong says shakily, then clears his throat. There used to be a time when he thought that he had one leg up over Junhoe, that he was hyung and therefore he was supposed to look after him. He squeezes his eyes shut and wishes everything could've stayed the same. "After the whole concussion thing, this should be my treat."

"… _I'm not gonna say no to free meat_ ," Junhoe chimes, a little warily. " _Everything alright? Have you seen Hanbin today?_ "

"Yeah, he's right…here. Everything's fine. I just. Exercised. A little. That's all."

" _Don't wear yourself out. We're gonna go to karaoke afterwards and sing until I want to bury myself six feet under_ ," Junhoe adds, the chirpiness back in his tone. Fifteen years, Yunhyeong thinks, fifteen goddamn years. " _Tell Hanbin we're gonna have a trot-showdown._ ”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i. [sin-eater lore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin-eater).  
> ii. ♡♡♡ gerti ♡♡♡


	3. Chapter 3

The noraebang place is empty by the time they get there, just half past 9 pm. Neither of them go singing often, but Junhoe's excited enough for all of them that it's just nearly enough to quell his unease; he's afraid that if he opens his mouth, something ugly and unearthly might crawl out of his throat and grip onto Junhoe and ask him _why_.

The sleepy looking kid at the front desk cashes out their receipt and hands them a room plaque, gesturing to a corridor on the left with tacky carpeting to match the tacky wallpaper. "Thanks for nothing," Junhoe huffs under his breath, snatching up the plaque with a patronising smile, and in the same breath Yunhyeong gives the kid a little bow and Hanbin snorts.

"Pot, kettle," Hanbin quips, glancing around the place as if cataloguing each and every detail, down to every last smudged window.

"For the _record_ ," Junhoe says with a little scoff, shooting Hanbin a dirty look, "I'm an excellent cashier. Employee of the fucking year."

"Who also happens to nap in the stockroom and wakes up to find a rack of cash cards missing?" Hanbin asks innocently. "I wonder who _that_ is."

Junhoe's dirty look slides over to Yunhyeong, and for a second, it seems to slide into something more pinched, worried, even. And then the accusation comes: "Are you gonna take his side?"

It's a joke. It's supposed to be a joke. The entire conversation is meant to be light-hearted. A celebration that Junhoe thought Yunhyeong didn't know about. All he can think is _fifteen years_ and it's enough for him to want to burn from the guilt.

"I'm not taking anyone's side," Yunhyeong insists flatly, just as Hanbin says, "Don't ask hyung to protect you!" Their bickering seems louder than usual in the soundproof room, the walls dark and lined with nondescript framed photographs—a picture of a street in Seoul, a bike resting against the wall, a stretch of empty fields in washed out green in the dim lighting. He collapses on the couch as he watches Junhoe take control of the complex looking board, jabbing a couple of buttons until the screen bursts into life with too-bright colours. The baseline starts and the girls on the screen line up in their miniskirts, hands twinkling towards the screen.

"I know this one!" Junhoe exclaims excitedly, snatching up the microphone before anyone can even say anything, launching into a falsetto that would have had Yunhyeong in peals of laughter. But when Junhoe glances back at him, all Yunhyeong can do is rush up and leave the room, winding his way through dizzying corridors until he locates the men's room, dingy and small and definitely unwashed, if the stench was anything to go by.

He stares at his own reflection in the dirty mirror and when he blinks, he thinks he sees Junhoe's face superimpose over his, laughingly, for a split second. "No," he tells himself, bile rising up at the back of his throat, a sickening combination of oily meat and shame. The thought that had been fighting to break to the surface the second Hanbin had told him about Junhoe finally finds its way to shore and Yunhyeong squeezes his eyes and wonders what the timer on Junhoe's life looked like now. The thing about shaving any number of years off your life is that you never knew how many years you had to begin with.

"Hyung," Hanbin's voice floats in from behind him, clear even in the echoey space of the bathroom. "Don't think about it."

Yunhyeong's quiet for a moment, and then he bursts out into laughter, shaking his head incredulously.

"He did it for his own peace of mind," Hanbin says. In the mirror, Yunhyeong's still all alone. It occurs to him that without Junhoe to validate him, this could all be happening in his head. "If he didn't do it and he died, what do _you_ think his one regret would be?" At that, Yunhyeong swivels around, back pressing against the ceramic rim of the sink, letting the coldness press into his skin. Hanbin seems to glow just slightly in the weak fluorescent lighting. "Trust me, I know how it feels when there's something you can't fix. It's the least you could let him do for you."

"Ask me if I would've done that," Yunhyeong starts, "for him."

"I don't have to," Hanbin answers, meeting Yunhyeong's eyes solidly.

"I’m sorry," Yunhyeong eventually says. Hanbin looks too serious, like ten years older than what must be his twenty years of age, but then he laughs and the straight lines of his face dissipate. He knows Yunhyeong too well, knows Junhoe even better, and yet, to them, he's a blank slate. "Maybe you were a life coach at one point."

"One with a lot of regrets?" Hanbin returns, just as easily.

"They say doctors make the worst patients," Yunhyeong says, reaching out for half a second as if to clap Hanbin on the shoulder, but then aborts the movement and reaches for the door instead.

Junhoe's put on an oldie by the time they return, though he's not, to Yunhyeong's disappointment, singing his lungs off in the middle of the room. Instead, he's sitting in the middle of the long couch, turning and turning the microphone in his hands.

"I expected to come back to a solo concert," Yunhyeong teases. Junhoe's head picks up and he looks hopeful, elated. _Fifteen years less_. "What's the hold up?"

"You guys disappeared," Junhoe accuses, the petulance in his voice not entirely for show.

"Big baby," Hanbin snorts, grabbing a microphone for himself just as the song ends and another one starts loading up.

"Do those even work for you?" Yunhyeong asks.

"I guess we'll find out," Hanbin says, cocky enough that Junhoe gets up to shake his head in disapproval. But the opening bars start playing—a pop tune with a bassline strong enough that Yunhyeong feels it pulsating deep in his+ chest—and Hanbin slowly turns to stare at the screen, mouth agog.

Then, for the second time that week, Hanbin disappears.

 

 

/

 

 

"Try _Kim Hanbin, producer, Whistle_ ," Yunhyeong says, leaning a little into Junhoe's space on his couch. It's eleven in the morning after their noraebang trip and they're stealing Wi-Fi at their usual coffee shop, in their usual spot, doing their usual, painfully frustrating legwork on the dead or dying.

"He has a SoundCloud," Junhoe mumbles around his straw, lazily sucking on some drink with too much blended ice. Yunhyeong suspects it probably tastes more like water than coffee. "No Instagram, no Facebook."

"He's not going to make this easy for us, is he?" Yunhyeong sighs, trying not to betray how worried he feels. This isn't the first time they've had spirits disappear on them, and Yunhyeong's never had cause to be concerned. Mostly they just hope for the best—a random exorcism, a stroke of luck. But this time, there's something Yunhyeong hadn't even known he wasn't ready to let go of yet. It felt a little like selfishness, too, something that yawned too wide and too uncomfortable in his chest.

Junhoe hands him an earbud and hits play just as Yunhyeong stuffs it in his ear. A quiet bass starts playing, the beat catchy enough that he starts tapping his foot against the ground. "Producer, huh?" Yunhyeong jokes, but Junhoe makes a face that suggests he doesn't think Hanbin could possibly be anything but some degenerate college drop-out, though the furrow between his eyebrows reads as worry.

"At this rate, we'll have to hire a hacker or some shit," Junhoe groans, rubbing his cheek against his palm in frustration. "Maybe he just upped and left. Poof." He gestures with his hands, one of them stained blue at the fingertips with ink from his ballpoint pen. "Gone. Vamoose."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Yunhyeong teases, taking the laptop from Junhoe to do a little clicking around that he knows will be futile. But he doesn't get a response and when he looks up, Junhoe has a little frown on his face, the one he gets when he's trying to figure out how to say something without offending everyone in the room.

" _What?_ " he blurts out defensively, pressing a hand to his chest. "I don't hate him. He just—" Gaze flickering over Yunhyeong's face, Junhoe gulps like he's about to say something he shouldn't "—he's fucking weird, hyung."

"You say that about everyone, present company included."

"And I'm not wrong. You exorcise spirits for a living—have you ever thought about that? Hardly every kid's dream. I guess you could say ghostbusters…but this isn't exactly ghostbusters—"

"—oh my god—"

"—is it? What?" Eyes narrowed, Junhoe pries the laptop from Yunhyeong's hand and stares at the screen. It's a YouTube video that can't go any higher than 240p, a grainy affair titled _Kim Hanbin, Rap Prodigy_ . There's a kid onscreen in a bandana and a cap and a singlet with skinny arms and too much bravado for his thin, high voice. "What. The. _Fuck_."

But there's no mistaking that it's Hanbin—five years younger and still as nebulous as ever, because other than the title, there's nothing to tell them what this video even _is_. It feels absurd, funny, like a joke that Yunhyeong doesn't quite get. Junhoe starts laughing, throws himself back into his chair and clutches his stomach like it's the funniest thing he's ever seen. Yunhyeong thinks he hears a little something like relief.

"It almost started feeling like…"

"…he wasn't real," Junhoe concludes quietly, "yeah. Like we…made him up or something. At least it's good we know we're not fucked in the head."

"Hey," Yunhyeong warns, out of habit. There's something else about this video that must _surely_ be of use. And then it hits him: "The date stamp."

"What?"

"Right here." He taps the corner of the screen, where the white, heavily pixelated text reads _13:03:44 22/10/1996_. "He must have been…what, twelve? Thirteen here?"

"What're you getting at?"

"The Hanbin we know…I'd say he's eighteen. Maybe early twenties, tops."

"…So?"

"So the math doesn't add up. He'd have to have been born _in_ 1996 to be anywhere near twenty this year. To have died at twenty." Yunhyeong gestures at the screen again. "If he's older than we thought, then…What are you _doing_?"

"The news that we found," Junhoe answers, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he calls out another search, "We didn't consider older people, right?" And there it is again: the short, nondescript article that Junhoe had dismissed that first week they met Hanbin. Man in his 30s jumps off bridge, another statistic in the recent influx of suicides. Current status: unknown. His eyes had just finished skimming over the last line when Junhoe clicks the search bar again: Kim Hanbin, suicide, 30s man, bridge, death. Nothing. "Now what?"

Junhoe turns to Yunhyeong like he might have the correct answer for this exact situation, when all Yunhyeong has at best is a little bit of overly optimistic hope. "Now we wait for him to come back to us."

 

 

/

 

 

"I've always thought I was wrong about him being a jumper," Junhoe says later, when Yunhyeong's walking him to the train station on his way to the supermarket. "He just. Didn't seem like… You know. Like he was any good at losing _anything_."

"You didn't think he would give up on living." Yunhyeong thinks of Hanbin, who'd stood with him in the bathroom, serious and angry and firm. "That he would just…push his way through everything."

"Like he'd get angry if you even told him you were thinking of quitting something. Like he'd…Like he'd put you through a movie montage to lift your spirits or some fucking shit like that." Junhoe stretches, and his long shadow stretches along with him, shading Yunhyeong's face from the 3pm sun. He wonders what Hanbin had told Junhoe to do when the question of the trade-off for Yunhyeong's life had come up, if it had come up at all. "The bastard argued with me over _everything_ but I…kind of miss it. It's too quiet now."

"You just want someone to shout at," Yunhyeong jests, slinging an arm loosely around Junhoe's neck.

"Oh no, you've caught me," Junhoe says, with an exasperated sigh. "Who knew he’d turn out to be fucking 42 or something. Might have kids of his own. Maybe that's what drove him to suicide."

"He'd be about 32," Yunhyeong corrects, though he can't vouch for the accuracy of the rest of Junhoe's statement. There must have been a reason he'd chosen to revert back to eighteen, and it definitely had something to do with his death, though Yunhyeong can't even _begin_ to figure out what. "And he might not be dead yet." Junhoe eyes him carefully, as though Yunhyeong's the one teetering on the edge of a high building. "The news said it. Status unknown."

After a beat, Junhoe says, "I know it's possible. We've seen it _be_ possible. I just. If he's still alive and he's not…He could be…" They walk in silence for a few beats, and then: "Fuck." Normal, happy people didn't become wandering spirits; whatever the circumstances were, however Hanbin got to be what he became, it's not like he paid for a ticket at the entrance of an amusement park. "It just scares me more. The idea that death isn't the end. If that ever happens to me…"

"You'll know where to look for me, right?" Yunhyeong beams, mostly with false cheer, and he squeezes Junhoe's shoulder gently as they stop under the big clock in front of the station.

"You might die before I do, hyung." _Fifteen years_. "What am I gonna do then, huh?"

It's on the tip of his tongue, ready to roll off, more accusatory than he would have liked it to be. _I know what you did for me_ , but it seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth, just like all the other things he doesn't know how to say. "With the way you drink cola? I'm definitely _still_ going to be here." Junhoe laughs and waves goodbye, and the second he disappears into the trickling stream of the afternoon crowd, Yunhyeong whips out his phone and texts his editor a quick _do you know the reporter who wrote this?_ , attaching the article Junhoe had found.

By the time a reply comes in, Yunhyeong’s abandoned editing his piece approximately three times, and picked up one of the books Hanbin had left behind to read— _I had to ask around but it seems like he's open to e-mails. Why?_ There's a contact card attached to the text, so Yunhyeong ignores the _why_ in favour of typing up an e-mail that doesn't make him sound like he's entirely insane.

He gets his answer a little after ten the following day, when Junhoe pops over with Jiwon in tow, announcing that they're _idiots_ for not checking Hangang Park first. That had been Jiwon's suggestion, apparently.

"He ends up there sometimes, right?" Junhoe says as Jiwon carefully toes off his shoes like he's afraid of detonating something on Yunhyeong's doorstep. On the couch, Yunhyeong sips on a cup of coffee and opens his e-mail for the first time that morning and nearly spits all over his laptop.

"He's alive," Yunhyeong declares slowly, unsure how to process this. Not quite joy and not quite fear, the nebulousness of not knowing what any of this meant.

"…Who's alive?" Junhoe asks suspiciously, taking three strides and crossing Yunhyeong's small flat to plop down next to him, narrowing his eyes at the laptop.

"I asked my editor to hook me up with the reporter," Yunhyeong explains, nodding at Jiwon as he steps awkwardly into the apartment, handing the laptop over to Junhoe so he can get up and get some drinks, a snack, whatever. Anything to get his hands moving so he can _think_. "And then I e-mailed him, made up some story about being Hanbin's cousin and I don't think he bought it, but he trusts my editor."

"Yonsei University Severance Hospital," Junhoe breathes out, sounding like he's been sucker punched. "But hyung—"

"I know. I know all he says is that that’s where Hanbin's admitted to but…"

"A little chance is better than nothing," Jiwon pipes in for the first time. He looks between the both of them, twirling his car keys in hand. "Right?”

 

 

/

 

 

The hospital’s glass doors slide open with a low hum. Usually it’s chaotic, with people and spirits alike littering the stark white corridors, but today it's deathly quiet inside the wards. Yunhyeong can't quite believe he's about to do this.

The plan so far had been for him to charm something or the other out of someone at the counter. ”I saw it in a movie once," Jiwon had assured him in the elevator, as if that was of any help at all. "Just use your manly charms." It's a mark of how much Junhoe hates hospitals that he doesn't even throw in an insult or two.

The nurse at the counter looks a little bored and sleepy behind the glass, her eyes glowing from the reflection of her computer screen. The monotonous clicking coming behind the counter tells Yunhyeong that she's only half-listening to his sob story and more interested in her game of Solitaire. It doesn't even take a lot for her to give him a room number—4B, a ward of two—and caution him that they shouldn't take more than an hour, though records tell her that Kim Hanbin should still be out like a light. She throws his name out like it's not a big deal.

Half-way to the room, Junhoe makes a grab for his hand and Yunhyeong squeezes it. He doesn't know what he's expecting, but they find Hanbin in a bed, hooked up to a machine, looking a little broader and more sallow and on top of it all, sporting a patchy beard.

"Holy _shit_ ," Jiwon says first, glancing around the empty room with its other vacant bed, then scoots around it to pick up the clipboard at the end. "Says he's been out for a few weeks now."

"The timeline matches." Yunhyeong's proud to say that his voice absolutely does not waver. He can't tear his eyes away, because _this_ Hanbin feels like a dream, that if Yunhyeong tried to touch him, he'd go right through. "Hangang Park was… what, one, two months ago?"

"He's alive," Junhoe whispers, eyes wide and almost frightened, "I—" And then he starts laughing, long and incredulous. " _F_ _uck_."

"Watch it," Yunhyeong warns automatically, taking another step closer, listening to the steady mechanised beeping of Hanbin's heart. Junhoe moves to join Jiwon, takes the clipboard from his hands and flips through it.

"The doctors don't have a goddamn clue what's going on with him, do they?"

"It's not like they can explain the fuc—" Jiwon stops, claps a hand over his mouth. "I _mean_ , your soul-snatching shit. Because that's what he is, isn't he? A body without a soul."

"So we're back to square one," Junhoe says. "Fucking _great_."

 

 

/

 

 

He finds Hanbin waiting for him on his doorstep, crouched against the wall with his arms around his knees, and something like relief floods Yunhyeong's chest.

"Hey," he calls out tentatively. There's a look on Hanbin's face that suggests he's been crying or he's spent a few days crying—one or the other. "You're back."

"You weren't home." Worry tinged with accusation. "It didn't feel right to go in without you."

"Junhoe and I were out at the park. It's…a long story." He waves a hand in the air, quickly unlocking his front door and pushing it open, letting Hanbin step inside before him. "Where'd you go?"

He doesn't answer Yunhyeong immediately—just paces around the room as Yunhyeong goes around switching the lights on. "I don't know." One step, two step, and then he's whirling back to face Yunhyeong, running a hand through his hair. "I don't _know_."

Panic is never a good thing, and given Hanbin’s track record of disappearing into thin air, Yunhyeong has his best placating mediator voice on when he asks, "What did you see?"

"There's this road, I think I used to pass it a lot, with a brick wall." Hanbin has his eyes closed now, chewing his lip as if in deep thought. "I walk and stand on a corner, next to this door and it's just…It feels a little like…" When he opens his eyes again, they're filled with tears and it's so uncharacteristic of him that Yunhyeong takes a step forward, makes an aborted move to hug him before he remembers he _can't_.

"I'm sorry," Yunhyeong says, though he doesn't know what he's apologising for in particular. "That place must _mean_ something."

"Yeah, no shit, hyung." Hanbin scoffs, furiously wiping his tears with the heel of his palm. "I can't even remember _why_ and it's making me feel like crap. I can't do this any more. The not knowing. The disappearing. It's not _fair_ that _this_ is how I meet you and eventually, I'll have to take my leave to the great unknown."

"Hanbin," Yunhyeong says helplessly, licking his lips as he casts around for something to say. Why doesn't he _ever_ have the right thing to say?

"I don't _want_ to go," he bulldozes on like he hadn't heard Yunhyeong at all.

 _It's now or never_ , Yunhyeong thinks, then says, "We know who you are." Hanbin stares at him like he's grown a third head, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly. "At least, we know where your body is. Your name. Probably what you do."

"I'm not dead?"

"No?"

"Was that a question or an answer?"

"No," Yunhyeong says firmly, "no. You're not dead. Kim Hanbin, 32. You're a music produc—"

"I'm _32_?" Hanbin looks almost offended at this revelation, his forehead wrinkling the same way it did whenever Junhoe said something particularly dense. "Is that why…at the noraebang…"

"Yeah, your name was in the credits. At that point in your life, it must have meant _something_. Big enough for you to disappear like that."

"I—" Hanbin stops and starts pacing again, his breathing growing more and more erratic. "I didn't want to write it. There was an argument." He looks up, eyes fixed on the ceiling, like he’s hearing the fighting going on in his head. "But work trickled in slowly and sometimes it's easier to just give in than stand my ground. I hated myself for it." The laughter he lets out is both incredulous and bitter.

"Hanbin…" Yunhyeong starts placatingly. "There's no point in jumping to conclusions like this. You can't just…file away one moment by assigning it an emotion."

"But what if it _isn't_ just one moment? What if it's a lifetime of moments?" _A life lived in negatives_ , Yunhyeong thinks, though he's not sure where he's heard it before, _sin-eater, aren't you scared?_

"You don't know who you are yet." Yunhyeong gestures in front of him, as if that would drive his point home. "What else do you remember?"

Hanbin opens his mouth like he's about to argue, then visibly deflates. "The brick wall. I guess I know what it is now. Used to work there… 24 fucking hours a day."

"Then we'll go there and we'll see what else you can remember."

Hanbin stares at him like he's crazy, asks, "Right now?” He glances at the clock, both hands pointing straight up. “But there won’t be a bus for us to take.”

"It's important," Yunhyeong insists firmly, not sure who he's trying to convince here. It feels a little like he's about to rip off a bandaid. "Let's go."

 

 

/

 

 

It takes them several turns and a pissed off cabbie to finally locate Hanbin's place—a squat brick-building that looks more like a warehouse than an office.

"You ever have one of those dreams that stays the same night after night?" Hanbin asks as Yunhyeong pulls up the zipper on his jacket, and adjusts the cap on his head. There's a possibility that there's a security guard or a camera somewhere, and getting arrested isn't exactly on his bucket list. "This feels a little like it. You remember the details when you stand there, but what comes before or after…" Hanbin shrugs, as they go around the building to the back entrance. "This is it. I used to stand right here."

If Yunhyeong times his footsteps just right, it almost sounds like it’s Hanbin's sneakered feet crunching against the gravel as he walks and leans against the wall, tipping his head back. The ground is littered with cigarette butts and half-forgotten receipts and candy-wrappers. "So you're a smoker," Yunhyeong says, imagining the Hanbin he'd seen lying in the hospital right here with his beard and a turtleneck, lighting one up. "A workaholic with a penchant for late nights."

"Every night, apparently." Sighing, Hanbin kicks his feet against the ground and straightens up, balefully eyeing the keypad as he moves to the back door.

"I didn't bring my break-and-enter kit, unfortunately," he jokes, watching Hanbin's hand hover over the worn-out numbers.

"Good thing I remember then, huh? 2003." Hanbin steps aside to let Yunhyeong punch the buttons. "I couldn't get in the last time."

"Couldn't get in," Yunhyeong asks, just as the lock snicks open, "or didn't want to?"

"Isn't that the same thing?"

The corridor's dim when they step inside, though not entirely dark, with little decorative lights lining the wall sporadically. It's clear enough that this is usually an office space of some kind, though there's no one there at this time of night. Yunhyeong follows Hanbin to the stairwell, trying not to look too scared as they make their way up, feeling out one step after another. The second floor is much brighter because of the moonlight, and they locate the door to Hanbin's studio out of the two easily enough; the other had stickers and cartoons plastered to the front.

"Didn't think you were the kind of a guy with a yellow door," Yunhyeong comments. His hand shakes just the slightest as he keys in the passcode for the second time, but he'll chalk that up to the cold more than anything else. "Ready?"

"I guess," Hanbin says, though he makes no move forward when Yunhyeong pushes the door open.

"Alright, okay, let your hyung step through the dark unknown apartment first." Yunhyeong rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. "Geez."

"You know you love this stuff," Hanbin murmurs, trailing after Yunhyeong like a kid whose mom had coerced him into meeting a stranger, “Finding out where people belong and where they should be. You're the same in your kitchen."

"What, _clean_?"

"Determined that everything has its right place and _should_ be made right." He stops after a few steps in the dark studio. " _Shit_." Yunhyeong locates the switch and the light flickers on almost ominously, and then he sees what Hanbin's talking about. The place was less of a working studio and more of an apartment, with a blanket hanging loosely over some pillows on the couch (unmade), a couple of mugs strewn on the coffee table (unwashed), and one monitor still switched on, though the brightness had been dimmed so low that they hadn't noticed it before. "Bet you're just itching to clean this place up, huh?"

"Hanbin…" Yunhyeong breathes out, toeing off his shoes automatically, then starts slowly pacing around the room. It doesn't feel like whoever lived here left the place much, judging by the state of things. There's a phone by the corner of the room with its cord left unplugged, a couple stacks of books littered here and there, and the walls tacked with papers full of scribbles. "Your handwriting is terrible."

"…Thanks," Hanbin scoffs, voice shaky enough that Yunhyeong turns to look at him. He's staring at a spot on the ground, as if he can't bear to look around.

"Breathe," Yunhyeong says slowly, trying not to let the panic seep into his voice. "It's okay, I'm with you, right? A capable adult. We'll figure this out."

"It's not hard to guess why I’m like this now," Hanbin says, voicing what Yunhyeong's trying not to think aloud, that there’s really nothing to figure out; the studio was a scene of crime in its own way, "Man, 32, hopelessly lonely, dies alone with not even _cats_ —"

"—That's not true," Yunhyeong cuts in, insistent.

"You're not supposed to lie to ghosts, hyung. Or not hyung, I guess. Whatever." He gestures around the room helplessly. "No one's even been here to clean up. At least I didn't die in here and…What are you doing?"

Yunhyeong had picked up a stack of books and started moving them back to the shelf, setting them up in height order. "What does it look like I'm doing?" he asks, trying his best to line them by height and ignore the thin film of dust that had settled over everything. "Cleaning up."

"So I'm the one who fell and hit my head, and you're the one losing it."

"It'll be nice," Yunhyeong answers through gritted teeth, glaring daggers in Hanbin's direction. He knows what Hanbin's doing—using self-deprecation as some kind of defense mechanism so he didn't have to think about the fact that staying in this room for too long had driven him to do what he did. "For when you wake up and come back here."

Hanbin makes a sound, and for a while, the only noise in the room is Yunhyeong moving book to shelf, book to shelf, and then: "Sometimes I wonder how your optimism hasn't killed you yet."

Yunhyeong gulps, something hard drags down the walls of his throat. "It does. It just wasn't me who paid the price."

"…Oh shit. I didn't mean it like that. I don't—That wasn't your fault. Junhoe—"

"I know, I'm just saying. Sometimes the best you can do is just keep going." He slots in a book about flowers next to some poetry; if nothing else, he'd love to have a conversation with this year's Hanbin. "And that's gonna be good enough."

"Then at least put on some music. It's the least this shithole studio can do."

 

 

/

 

 

Afterwards, they sit through the sunrise, watch the weak orange rays of light filter in through the dusty windows, with their backs against the couch and Hanbin's laptop between them, hooked up to the stereo speakers in the room. They'd burned through all of Hanbin's pop songs—some better than others—and were now making their way through his more experimental music. The shit, as Hanbin had said, he’d rather produce.

"The guy who made all of this," Hanbin pipes up after a long bout of silence, "he's the ghost." The soft sounds of the viola had snaked their way between them both, and Yunhyeong almost doesn't want to interrupt it to ask what Hanbin's talking about.

"The you from before?"

"He just came, day in and day out." Hanbin shifts so he's facing Yunhyeong, hugging his knees to himself, looking all of twenty and so very mortal. "Without other people, how do you know you're really real?"

Yunhyeong thinks of Junhoe then, of his parents in Daegu. He hasn't called them in a while, but he promises to do so later this week, when all this business with Hanbin is settled. " _I_ know you're here," he says.

"Maybe you're all ghosts to me," Hanbin says. There's a look in Hanbin's eyes that Yunhyeong's never seen before, not even the first time they met, when all of Hanbin's thoughts had been occupied with only jumping. _Hyung_ , his lips seem to form, though no sound comes out, and Yunhyeong freezes like there's ice in his veins. Hanbin's hand settles on his cheek; if he closes his eyes, he can feel it, maybe, just a little hint of warmth. Around them, the viola colours in to a crescendo and fades to almost nothingness again. Common sense tells him he should stop this, but when he opens his eyes, Hanbin's gone again.

 

 

/

 

 

"You mean you've been to his _flat_?" Junhoe demands, specks of rice flying out of his mouth.

"Chew with your mouth closed," Yunhyeong nags. He'd carefully omitted the part where Hanbin was going to _kiss_ him, knowing full well that Junhoe would turn red and potentially choke on his food. Besides, Yunhyeong wasn't entirely sure it had happened; he’d been sleepy. Hanbin was… Hanbin _is_ …

"So let me get this straight. You saw him. He took you to his place. And you never, not for one second, not for a single goddamn moment, thought to _call_ me?" Junhoe looks affronted now and Yunhyeong can't help but snicker, hiding his mouth behind his hand on the pretext of shoving more rice into his mouth. "What the fuck, hyung."

"I thought you were busy with Jiwon—"

"—shut _up_ —"

"—and I didn't know if we were going to find his place at all." Yunhyeong sighs and sets his bowl down. Dealing with Hanbin's disappearing acts, as unintentional as they were, was starting to wear him down, though it's even harder to admit it's because Yunhyeong doesn't want to let go of him yet. "He must've been overwhelmed, because he disappeared after a couple of hours."

Junhoe chews on his chopstick contemplatively, like this was a difficult idea to wrap his head around. "So…he's gone then. That's it. Finito. No fucking thank you or goodbye."

"Screw you, I have manners," comes in from behind him. Hanbin appears, sliding into the chair he usually occupies during dinner. "Yunhyeong-hyung left out the part where he cleaned everything up."

"It’s a pig sty!" Yunhyeong exclaims at the same time Junhoe says, "To the surprise of _no one_." They're both eyeing Hanbin like they can't quite believe he's still here.

"I can't believe you're still here," Junhoe adds. " _Why?_ "

"I just…" Hanbin's gaze flickers briefly to Yunhyeong, and then back to Junhoe again "…wanted to say goodbye. Thank you. Something like that, I guess."

"So touched, thanks for thinking of me," Junhoe bemoans, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead like he's about to swoon. He blanches only when Yunhyeong kicks him under the table.

"I'm definitely regretting coming back while _you're_ here," Hanbin grumbles.

"Where'd you go?" Yunhyeong asks. Hanbin looks at him properly for the first time and something in Yunhyeong's stomach turns and he thinks of the way Hanbin had placed his hand on his cheek.

"The roof. But I didn't forget how to—" Hanbin shakes his head, runs a hand through his loose hair, gaze dropping to the table "—make my way back here." He shouldn't feel vindicated, but a feeling of warmth spreads through Yunhyeong's chest anyway.

"Is this the Last Supper with Kim Hanbin?" Junhoe asks, as if sensing the tension.

"How would you even know about that? Didn't you drop out of high school?"

"Hey!" Junhoe exclaims, affronted, then turns to Yunhyeong for justice. "He's using my sad backstory against me."

" _Kids_ ," Yunhyeong sighs, though he can't help but smile anyway. It feels like there's a balance in the bickering, in being sandwiched between Hanbin and Junhoe, even if it means having a headache. And maybe, for once, just for once, Yunhyeong thinks he can afford to be a little selfish.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

_… and the fire that spread down from the theatres trapped thirty people in the stairwell that—_

"Turn it off." Yunhyeong stretches across Junhoe's lap for the remote to mute the television. He wasn't really in the mood for a follow-up on the scene of the crime they'd just left. Crumbling buildings, smoky stairwells, a spirit wailing for her sister, grabbing onto Junhoe's arm and yelling at him that sneaking in wasn't the way to help anyone. They'd just have to come back another day. "They won't tell you anything that you don't already know."

"I'm gonna need a shower. A three-day long shower," Junhoe announces, loudly, in the way he does when there's something he doesn't want to talk about. And then Yunhyeong's left with Hanbin. They'd been sticking together for the past few days, as though they were all afraid Hanbin might disappear at any moment.

"Does it ever become easier?" Hanbin asks him, scooting closer on the couch. Even dressed in all white, he's still clean and pristine, while Yunhyeong's sooty and sweaty and entirely too exhausted for this conversation.

"It becomes _easier_ , not easy." Yunhyeong looks him over carefully; Hanbin's been awfully quiet and contemplative lately and there's no prize in guessing why. "But what we do is important. To me, at least." Hanbin makes a sound that suggests he doesn't agree and he shifts a little closer, staring up at the ceiling.

"You're scared of going, aren't you?" Yunhyeong finally asks, having stewed, steamed, broiled, turned this conversation every which way that didn't end with Hanbin disappearing on him, and finally just decided to just spit it out instead. The silence hangs still in the air and Yunhyeong bites the inside of his lip, afraid that he's said the wrong thing.

"There's nothing for me there. Here, I have…" he trails away suddenly, Adam's apple bobbing when he meets Yunhyeong's eyes. "Will you look for me? If I go back?"

He'd be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about this, but he knows that Hanbin wouldn't remember him. He and Junhoe and this flat and the supermarket by the corner and a million other places would be a distant memory. A fever dream of sorts. Things that you find in limbo stay in limbo. But aloud, Yunhyeong says, "'course I will. You think I'm just gonna leave you to your caveman ways?"

Hanbin laughs then, the apples of his cheeks rounding up, the line of his throat exposed, and Yunhyeong's heart thunders in his chest. He shakes his head and gets up to crack the window open, just to have something to do with his hands. The air inside was starting to get stuffy anyway. From the bathroom, Junhoe starts belting out a 2000s love song, irritatingly in tune despite his dramatics.

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" Hanbin muses, propping his arms against the ledge. It's the kind of day unfitting for a shopping mall caught on fire: too blue skies and puffy clouds and a kind of forever stretching on and on in the distance. Yunhyeong scoffs at the irony and closes his eyes, feeling the breeze on his damp skin.

When he opens them again, Hanbin's no longer there.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

The biggest mistake about letting Junhoe ride shotgun is how many trot songs he knows. "As the driver," Jiwon had cut in, approximately four and a half songs ago, "I reserve the right to want to live through this ride." But Junhoe had batted his hands away from the radio and that was that.

The noise is at least a welcome distraction from Yunhyeong's thoughts. He's still seated firmly in camp This Might Not Be A Good Idea that Junhoe, with Jiwon's support, had enthusiastically set on fire.

"Did you or did you not say that he _wanted_ you to look for him?" Junhoe had asked, waving a pencil accusatorily in Yunhyeong's direction, the point threateningly sharp.

"… yes, _but_ —"

"No buts, the court has decided. First thing Monday, we'll drive down to see him. You think _I_ wanna step foot in that godforsaken place? This is for you, hyung." Which is to say that Junhoe probably misses Hanbin after weeks of waiting to see if he'd turn up again. He just doesn’t know how to say that. Neither of them do. So much for helping people move onto another realm.

The hospital looks a little different this time, a little less imposing and more welcoming. The nurse on duty isn't as lax as the one they'd run into previously, but Junhoe's in a chatty mood and talks her ear off like a five-year-old whose one burning question about life is why the sky is blue. That leaves Yunhyeong and Jiwon to retrace their steps.

"He won't remember us," Yunhyeong tells Jiwon for the _n_ th time, though it turns out that all his arguments are for nothing because Hanbin's bed is empty. Yunhyeong has never once tried to think about what it feels like to be a jumper, but he feels the plunge now, the bottoming out of his stomach. He wonders if anyone's ever thrown up mid-fall.

The other bed's occupied by a geriatric snoring like his life depended on it and before Yunhyeong can say anything, a sullen teenager eyes them warily and slinks past them. "You're not here for compensation from gramps, are you?"

"No," Jiwon says slowly, realising that Yunhyeong wasn't going to speak up, "we were… looking for the guy who used to be here."

"Oh," the teenager says, looking genuinely surprised, "yeah, you guys are about a week late. Couldn’t have come on time for the poor bastard?”

“I’m sorry, how old are you again?” Jiwon questions with his brows raised, hands clasped politely behind his back. Despite himself, Yunhyeong can’t help but stifle a little laugh, given that Jiwon isn’t much older.

“Poor guy had to pack up and go home all alone,” the teenager continues disdainfully. “I heard he was in a coma for a month or two and to wake up to no one…”

“It’s not like we—” Jiwon starts, but Yunhyeong cuts him off with a little bow in the teenager’s direction, saying, “You wouldn’t happen to know how to contact him, would you?”

“I bought him a juice pack, it’s not like we _bonded_.” She moves to pull the curtain around the bed, giving them one last look of absolute disgust, then disappears beyond it.

“Well,” Yunhyeong says, to no one in particular, “it’s a good thing Junhoe didn’t come with us.”

Yet, the dread he’d felt earlier had turned into relief, and that relief had turned into hope that he tries miserably to quash, but then fails entirely when Junhoe suggests that they check Hanbin’s place out.

“Let me get this straight,” Yunhyeong says, looking at Junhoe through the rearview mirror from the backseat, where he’d been banished to, “you want us to just waltz up in there and say _hi, remember when we hung out with your lost soul for a few weeks?_ ”

Junhoe hums, crossing his arms and tapping his chin as if in deep thought and looks Yunhyeong dead in the eye when he declares _yes_ , that _is_ exactly his gameplan and it _is_ going to work. Without a shadow of a doubt.

Of course, he hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that Hanbin wasn’t going to be home. “Where the fuck could he _be_?” Junhoe questions as they stand in front of that familiar brick building, hitting the buzzer enough times that Yunhyeong’s worried their first meeting could seem like a confrontation for compensation. “He doesn’t have a life, remember?”

“Try not to say that aloud if we see him,” Jiwon suggests, gently removing Junhoe’s hand from the button, but doesn’t let go of it.

“You know the code, right?” Junhoe asks suddenly, turning to Yunhyeong.

“We’re _not_ breaking and entering into his place. Do you want to get _arrested_?”

“It’s not like he’s a stranger! It’s _Hanbin_.”

“A Hanbin that we don’t know, who probably wouldn’t recognise us. _And_ —” Yunhyeong holds up a finger before Junhoe can start arguing with him “—would think we’re nuts if we tried explaining why we’re here. Any other questions?”

“It’s like you don’t care about him at all,” Junhoe grouses, shoving a hand angrily in his pocket. “ _I’m Yunhyeong and I’m too reasonable to ever do anything_.”

“… is that supposed to be me?” Yunhyeong questions, trying to look a little bit offended. Next to him, Jiwon bursts into peals of laughter, clutching onto Yunhyeong’s shoulder for support.

“It’s not funny,” Junhoe complains, smacking Jiwon on the shoulder.

“I miss him as much as you do,” Yunhyeong says, watching Jiwon rub Junhoe’s back placatingly. He takes a step back—the windows that had been shut the last time he was here were now wide open, which meant that someone had at least _been_ here. There’s a little teru teru bōzu dangling in the wind, and for a moment he seriously considers just punching in the code and letting them all in. “But he’s not going to remember us. It’s time to let him go and live his own life.”

“The last time he lived his own life, he ended up calling it quits. Is that what you want?”

“We can’t control what he wants to do with himself,” Yunhyeong says firmly. He may not have had a say back when Junhoe decided to throw fifteen years of his life away, but he’s not going to mess Hanbin’s life back up by stepping right into it. If the universe wills it, maybe Hanbin will end up on his doorstep again. Whatever it is, Yunhyeong won’t be the one dragging him back in.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

He’s alone on the train home when he sees someone that looks like Hanbin in a coat, standing in the next cabin, amongst the sea of faces. It can’t be right. In the days after he’d first left, Yunhyeong saw Hanbin everywhere. The news anchor at five, the cashier at his supermarket, the guy with the frisbee in the park—and every time he blinked, Hanbin disappeared.

It doesn’t work this time; Yunhyeong blinks himself cross-eyed and Hanbin’s still standing there. He doesn’t look much different, except he’s shaved off his scraggly coma-beard and styled his hair some. He’s in a mustard yellow coat, the colour of his door, and a turtleneck, clutching onto a book that he’s genuinely attempting to read at rush hour. In his head, Yunhyeong can already hear Junhoe shouting at him: _fate, this is fate hyung, grab fate by the balls!_

Except he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. If Hanbin remembers anything of them, he’d have come looking by now. It’s not as though Yunhyeong’s moved anywhere or changed his routine in any way imaginable. In fact, he’s kept it exactly the same. If anyone asks, it’s because he’s a man of habit and not at all because he’s waiting on someone.

The train comes to a halt and more people try to pack into the already full carriages. It’s rude to stare, but Yunhyeong watches Hanbin get shuffled along by an over-enthusiastic middle-aged woman, pushes him just a few bodies closer to Yunhyeong. Hanbin looks irritated, the same expression he’d made whenever he’d wanted Junhoe to shut up but didn’t feel up to arguing his way to silence.

Fate is stupid, Yunhyeong thinks, feeling a sort of antsiness build up in his chest, knowing that he’s about to do something impulsive. In the next moment, he was either going up to Hanbin—though god knows how he’s going to even attempt to do that in this tin of sardines—or lose his chance forever. But then Hanbin looks up and sees him, flashes him a little smile, the same way someone might look at another stranger when you share a moment of solidarity while you’re trying not to get crushed during the rush hour.

He doesn’t recognise Yunhyeong at all.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

He takes a walk in his old neighbourhood for the first time in a good few months. Having Junhoe and Hanbin around had taken up most of his time and his attention. He’d left a few of his habits to fold into themselves in the corner of his mind, letting him shake off the routine of visiting little spots of significance, bearing flowers or chocolates or an overly-sentimental teddy bear. It’s one aspect of him that even Junhoe doesn’t know about, and as he stands in front of his high school in the dying afternoon sun, he realises that it’s really one of the last things Junhoe doesn’t know about him.

His parents had relocated back to their hometown the year Chanwoo had graduated, leaving Yunhyeong to fend for himself in the big city. He didn’t mind—they had differing opinions on what it meant to be able to see spirits. For someone like Eunjin, it meant treating them like surveyors on the street, ready to grab you for a five minute discussion on your spending habits. Yunhyeong, on the other hand, occasionally thinks about how old someone like Taehyun would be right now, trying to do the math in his head that weighed out the years that could have been, every potential breath erased into some kind of void, unseeing and uncaring.

He wanders a little further after that, to the heavy oak tree by the park, where he’d buried Taehyun’s bracelet all those years back. It must have been dug out by now, by curious kids or squirrels or what have you, but Yunhyeong buys a drink from the vending machine anyway, places the can of coffee by the roots. It’s an offering to a Taehyun he knows is largely fictional—the one in his mind that had grown up sulky and introverted with his head in the clouds and a penchant for coffee.

The air around him shimmers something golden and Yunhyeong sucks in a lungful of the crisp autumn air and tries to think of nothing. These trips were, in part, something to remind him that what he was doing was not entirely redundant, but Hanbin’s face swims to the forefront of his mind again. Not the kid with the dimpled smile, head thrown back uproariously at some stupid crap Junhoe had said. Not the kid who had stood next to him by the window, the scent of summer and burning and laundry stirring in the air around them. Not even in possibilities, in the very dangerous _if we had met in another time_.

No, Yunhyeong thinks about the man he’d seen on the train, book clutched in his hand. Hardly the kind of person who lived the kind of life that he wanted to discard. And maybe some day something dark will curl itself around Hanbin’s throat again, but Yunhyeong would like to think that they’d made a difference after all, that when Hanbin had looked at him on the train and smiled, it had felt a little like the knot in Yunhyeong’s chest could ease up just the slightest.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

It’s funny, once that last bit of hope had been extinguished, Yunhyeong feels like he can breathe again. The weight of expectation had been drowning him slowly and he hadn’t even known it. He doesn’t bring the encounter up with Junhoe, knowing that he’d have to explain and re-explain _why_ he hadn’t said something to Hanbin in the first place, and other spirits come and go and in due time, Jiwon kisses Junhoe and he forgets entirely that he’s supposed to be badgering Yunhyeong about it.

So when his doorbell rings at 11pm, Yunhyeong expects a Junhoe who’d forgotten his key or even someone with the wrong address. Instead, he finds Hanbin standing there, smelling faintly of alcohol and looking a lot like Yunhyeong’s delusions.

“Uh,” Hanbin starts, staring at Yunhyeong with wide eyes.

“Uh,” Yunhyeong echoes, staring right back at him.

For a moment, they both stand there, still as statues, just gaping at each other, until Hanbin bursts into life. “Yunhyeong, right? I checked your mailbox.” He sounds exactly the same; Yunhyeong feels like he’s about to unceremoniously throw up on Hanbin’s really nice shoes. “I saw this place once, in a dream, but I…I don’t know why I’m here.”

“I might have an explanation for that,” Yunhyeong says, impressed that his voice doesn’t waver. “Do you want to…come in?” He can’t stop staring at him—the glint of his silver earrings, the delicate curve of his ear, the way his lips part just slightly—and when he brushes past Yunhyeong to step into the apartment, he’s so alarmingly warm and solid that Yunhyeong wants to grip onto his jacket, just for a second.

The door shuts quietly behind them and Hanbin’s gaze skitters from place to place until it settles, unnervingly, on Yunhyeong. “How much I can explain depends on how much you’ll believe me,” Yunhyeong starts levelly. “You were in a coma recently, right? And you feel like dreamt all of this up. This apartment, the street outside. Me.” If Junhoe were here, he’d be busy laughing his butt off at how cheesy he sounded in this precise moment.

“You,” Hanbin echoes, sucking in a deep breath. He runs a hand through his hair, looking around the apartment helplessly. “I remember this couch. I remember dinners at this very table that I’ve _never_ seen before in my life.” Shaking his head, Hanbin starts pacing back and forth, back and forth, clearly a habit he didn’t just pick up in the afterlife.

“Hanbin,” Yunhyeong calls out, and Hanbin whips around like he’s been zapped by electricity. “This isn’t some mission from the future stuff, I can tell you that for sure. But it’s not any less believable.”

“Beats thinking I’m losing my mind,” Hanbin says quietly. His stomach sinks; Junhoe was right and Yunhyeong had let his own fear overwhelm the need to do right by Hanbin. He’d written it off as selfishness, to want to insert himself back into Hanbin’s life, but now….

“Your soul left your body when you jumped and I happened to pick you up. At Hangang Park.” The Hanbin he knew floats up now, more of a ghostly apparition than Yunhyeong’s ever seen him, watery and translucent, pacing circles around flesh and blood Hanbin critically. “You were looking over the water. I walked up to you and I said—”

“ _It’s a nice day, isn’t it?_ ” Hanbin interrupts, letting out a little scoff, as if the pieces of the puzzle were sliding into place for him. “Shit.”

“You…remember?” He hates the hopefulness in his voice, hates that he thinks something might come out of this after all, after weeks of persuading Junhoe otherwise.

“A little bit. Seeing you on the train that day helped. There’s another kid, but I don’t remember what he looked like. Not this long after waking up.”

“Junhoe, right?”

“Right.” Hanbin looks relieved and nervous. He’s smiling, just a little, and Yunhyeong’s not sure what to make of that. “But I remember you. I remembered how to make my way back here.”

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

They get coffee the following week, at a decent hour of the day. It feels like something more than surreal to watch Hanbin order for them both, to respond when the barista flirts with him and he doesn’t even fluster, just flashes him a charming smile that makes Yunhyeong’s stomach flip.

“Americano,” Hanbin announces, when he sets their tray down. He looks a little hopefully in Yunhyeong’s direction and Yunhyeong nods, taking the drink with a grateful tilt of his head.

“How long are you gonna keep up this guessing game?” Yunhyeong asks, swirling his drink around, watching the maelstrom of dark liquid instead of looking up. He feels strangely shy, for some reason; Hanbin wants something from him, but Yunhyeong doesn’t know what it is yet. And for all Yunhyeong does in life, he likes playing it safe.

“Makes me feel a little less crazy every time I get something right.” His spoon makes a little clinking sound when he stirs his hot coffee.

“It’s hard to believe, I know.” It’s partly why Yunhyeong hadn’t wanted to look for Hanbin again—how was he going to explain that, at this precise moment, there were two spirits roaming on the sidewalk, and that Hanbin had been like them, once?

“But it’s not unbelievable.” Hanbin pops his teaspoon into his mouth to suck at it, and Yunhyeong’s gaze falls away and he takes a long drink from his straw.

“No?”

“We’re both sitting here, aren’t we?” Hanbin points out. “And I remember what it looks like in your bedroom, like a movie still. I remember what the view from your apartment looks like at 6am or 4pm or midnight. And I…I remember what you look like when you laugh, the sound of it. The way you look when you fall asleep on the couch, how serious you are when you’re cooking.” It’s the most Hanbin’s said since he found Yunhyeong again, like he’d been itching to let all of it out, but now he looks a little embarrassed and changes the topic. “I’m moving out, by the way.”

“I figured you would. You…didn’t like the place much.”

“It helped that it was clean,” Hanbin concedes, after a while, looking at Yunhyeong with a twinkle in his eye, like he’d just told a funny joke. Something tells Yunhyeong that he should tread lightly, but all he wants to do is reach across the table and touch Hanbin’s cheek the way Hanbin had touched his. “That was the first sign that you were real.”

“It felt like you weren’t real, either,” Yunhyeong confesses, figuring this was an everything-on-the-table type of conversation. “We looked for you, but you’d checked out by then.”

Surprise registers on Hanbin’s face and he says, “The patient in the other bed snored too much, I wanted to throttle him. The hospital couldn’t really find anything wrong with me anyway. Just signed me up for physio twice a week.”

“They were waiting for you to find your way back,” Yunhyeong explains.

“Funny.” Hanbin picks up his coffee cup and sips from it, wincing a little. “Didn’t feel like I’d found anything until I saw you again.”

They swap numbers after that. Hanbin texts him first—a picture of the view from the AirBnB flat he’d been renting out while he found a new place to move all his things into. It’s a clear day, the kind with blue skies that seem to stretch into forever. Underneath it, Hanbin writes, _thought of you_.

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

The sweltering heat of the summer sun really didn’t help in keeping Junhoe quiet, not when he’s sweating and red all over from moving Hanbin’s boxes from the lobby to Hanbin’s new place, grumbling angrily under his breath.

“The first time I see him again and _this_. Is how. He treats. Me,” Junhoe punctuates, kicking the ground with every word, though it’s not hard to imagine that he’s probably picturing Hanbin’s face.

“Technically, you offered,” Yunhyeong points out, huffing as he sets down his box.

“ _Technically_ ,” Junhoe starts, and Yunhyeong knows he’s in for a long argument, “you _asked_ if I wanted to meet Hanbin again. After all those weeks of denying me—” He stops abruptly, and only because Jiwon walks in at that precise moment, dressed in his tank top and looking every bit as sweaty as Junhoe.

“Aaaand Junhoe has left the building,” Yunhyeong announces, clapping him on the shoulder. Jiwon drops his box on top of Yunhyeong’s and slicks his too-long hair back with a hand, expertly snapping a rubber band around it to keep it out of his face.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jiwon asks, brows furrowing as he regards a still-gaping Junhoe.

“Heat stroke, I think,” Yunhyeong answers cheerily, patting Junhoe on the cheek. “Amongst other things.”

“Fuck you, hyung,” Junhoe mumbles, though his cheeks are a shade redder than they had been just a moment ago. “When’s the bastard coming around anyway? This is his place.”

“I said I’d start moving things first. Didn’t think we’d actually _finish_ before he gets here, but—”

“—if you say manual labour is good for us, I’ll kill you in your sleep. You’ve been texting him like a giggly teenager, don’t lie to me about your intentions here.”

“Someone thinks he’s an adult now,” Yunhyeong teases, ruffling Junhoe’s hair. “You know you can’t actually kill me by staring at me.”

Junhoe’s retort dies on his lips as he stares at a spot behind Yunhyeong’s head, where Hanbin had just walked in. “Sorry I’m late, I didn’t think you guys would be so…quick. Hi.” The silence that lapses between them is strange and foreign, and Yunhyeong cuts in before it gets _too_ weird.

“Hanbin, this is Junhoe. Junhoe, Hanbin.” Behind Junhoe, Jiwon makes a disgruntled sound. “And how can I forget Jiwon?”

“So did I make it up or did you break a plate at noraebang once?” Hanbin asks. The tension snaps all at once when Jiwon and Junhoe both burst into life, clamouring and arguing over each other over whether or not Hanbin is a bald-faced liar. It’s a little easier after that—Junhoe keeps his interrogation to a bare minimum and it helps that he’s periodically distracted by Jiwon’s general existence. A little after the sun sets, they offer to bunk off unpacking in search for take-out in the area.

“I’m starting to think that we shouldn’t have let them go off on their own,” Hanbin says, moving around the towers of boxes in search of one with cups for when they (eventually) return. “I’m gonna start looking for the ramyun.” Yunhyeong laughter echoes a little in the apartment and he finishes the pile of clothing he’d been folding to leave it in the cabinet. “You guys really didn’t have to stick around, you know."

From where Yunhyeong's standing, all he can make out is the top of Hanbin's dark hair as he moves around the kitchen. "Getting sick of us already?"

The sound of glasses clinking stops for a moment, and then Hanbin says, "Not possible. I thought you wouldn't even come for me in the first place." The joke falls flat on its face and Yunhyeong stands very still and very quiet. "Yunhyeong?"

"Present," he says, shooting a hand up in the air. "What if I stay here tonight?"

"…What, in this dusty place?"

"Yeah," Yunhyeong says. "It's beautiful if you don't think about how much you still have to unpack. How'd you even manage to score this place?"

"Let’s say I didn't go out much, so my budget was pretty damn flexible. I thought the last place was a little stifling."

"A change of scenery is always good." Yunhyeong moves towards the balcony and slides the doors open, letting in the cool evening breeze as he stretches, arms high in the air. His body feels properly sore, in the good way that tells him he's going to have a good night's sleep. And he hadn't even exerted himself over spirit-related activities. Surely a good sign. "Plus, the view is unbeatable."

"…Yeah," Hanbin says a little tersely. When Yunhyeong glances back, he catches Hanbin with his gaze fixed on him. "Twenty-year-old me would have lost his shit if he knew this is where he'd end up."

"I liked twenty-year-old you," Yunhyeong says, turning back to the view to stop his hammering pulse. _That_ definitely wasn't something he'd imagined, couldn't have imagined. "He was charming."

"Are you saying I'm less charming now?" Hanbin teases, setting the glasses down to join him on the balcony. "But…I liked him too. He was idealistic. Didn't really know how the world worked yet. That's a good thing sometimes." Yunhyeong squeezes Hanbin's shoulder just because he can, and under Yunhyeong's palm, he feels a little less solid than expected, more skin and bones and fragility. "Just like you."

"Me?" Yunhyeong frowns. "I'm not idealistic."

"You're nothing _but_ idealistic," Hanbin says, though not unkindly. He turns, leans back against the railing with his head tipped back and his face towards the sky and _there's_ that tattoo again, peeking out from under his white shirt.

"What does that say?"

Curling a finger, Hanbin snags the hem of his shirt to reveal the full expanse of the slightly faded tattoo. "Nihilism," Hanbin says, when Yunhyeong's frown only deepens in confusion, "the idea that nothing in the world really exists, so nothing really has value."

Yunhyeong thinks of Hanbin's despair, how he'd stood right in the middle of his old studio apartment and refused to look at anything around him. He thinks of finding Junhoe and Jiwon asleep on the couch after he returned from a late meeting with his editor. He thinks of every spirit he's come across, holding on to that last kernel of _something_ even when there was nothing left for them to stick around for any more.

"No?" Yunhyeong says, inching a little closer. He can afford to be daring now, to be a little reckless. "There's an idea, and then there's reality." Hanbin's head snaps upright and his hand finds its way to Yunhyeong's face again, his thumb running lightly against Yunhyeong's lower lip. "What were you thinking about, the time we listened to your music?"

"You have so many questions about other people," Hanbin murmurs quietly. They're close enough now that Yunhyeong can feel Hanbin's breath against his cheek, the shakiness of his exhale, his fear despite his bravado. For a moment, Yunhyeong sees a glimmer of Hanbin at twenty, looking at Yunhyeong with such intensity that he doesn't know what to do with it. But it's the same person, the one and only Kim Hanbin. "What about you? What do _you_ want?"

"I'm a simple guy," Yunhyeong answers, and then he tips his chin forward and kisses Hanbin softly.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

Junhoe and Jiwon leave a pile of take-out boxes and half-finished drinks in their wake, hightailing it out of there so they didn't have to participate in the clean-up. It becomes evident that it was a mistake to stay over when Hanbin emerges from the shower in nothing but sweatpants, drying his hair with a towel as he tries to locate a clean shirt to sleep in. And there's also the fact that he only has one mattress.

By the time Yunhyeong emerges from a (long, cold) shower, Hanbin has the bed set up and pushed against the balcony, the doors only half-closed, and there Hanbin sits, his feet dangling over the edge of the bed as he smokes. Yunhyeong had tried to imagine it, the time they'd gone to his place—Hanbin against the brick wall, a furrow between his eyebrows and his shoulders too tense to be anything but comfortable. But he looks different this time, relaxed, basking in the lights from the city below them.

"Smoking's bad for you, you know," Yunhyeong says, tugging a little uncomfortably at the hoodie Hanbin had offered him. It smells like nothing except mothballs, so at least Yunhyeong knows the universe wasn't quite out to get him yet.

"I'm the hyung now," Hanbin answers, scooting over a little to make space for Yunhyeong amongst the naked pillows. "So I'll be the one doing the nagging." Yunhyeong makes a sound of dissent, one that significantly increases in pitch when Hanbin slings an arm around him easily, like they've been doing this all along. He leans across and stubs his cigarette out in a small bowl that tells Yunhyeong that it's not the first he'd smoked during the span of Yunhyeong's shower.

"That's not happening," Yunhyeong says, pressing himself closer against Hanbin's side. It's a novelty of sorts, to be able to touch him, and there's a curious thrumming in his chest that wants to know how much he can take.

"Even _Junhoe_ calls me hyung," Hanbin points out, sounding scandalised. He tips his head, slowly at first, like he's stretching, and then he's a weight against Yunhyeong's shoulder—the smell of shampoo and cigarette smoke. "He's pretty much how I remembered him."

"What did it feel like, waking up?"

"…Quiet." Hanbin exhales softly, looking up so they're face-to-face.

"Except for the snoring."

"Except for the snoring. And then the doctors, of course." His eyes flutter shut, lashes dark against his cheeks; Yunhyeong wonders when he's ever been the kind of guy to think about _eyelashes_. "They had my phone in the drawer, but I spent those days just…kind of…trying to remember myself." Stretching an arm out, he spreads his fingers once, twice, against the view. "I kept thinking I was forgetting something important." Yunhyeong slides his palm against Hanbin's then, weaves their fingers together and pulls their hands closer to him. "I had a billion texts and fifty phone calls from my parents." There's a quiet tremor in his voice as he pushes himself upright to look at Yunhyeong, eyes bright with something like hope.

"People care about you if you just let them." It seemed obvious, but he felt like he had to say it aloud anyway.

"Pot, kettle," Hanbin retorts, squeezing Yunhyeong's hand, and though Yunhyeong doesn't have a damn clue what he's referring to, he forgets to ask when Hanbin kisses him again, slow and careful. Until he pulls away to ask, "Have you ever dated anyone?"

"What?" Yunhyeong breathes out, trying not to look too disappointed. "I'm 27, Hanbin. What do you think?"

"I don't think we ever talked about it. Or anything about you."

He stares for a moment, trying to puzzle out if he should just go in for another kiss, but this Hanbin is deadly serious, his lips pressed together in a little frown. "Yeah, I have," Yunhyeong concedes, planting a hand on the bed to lean back and grin at Hanbin teasingly. He doesn't usually enjoy talking about his seemingly unbreakable streak of getting dumped, but today his chest feels awfully light, like he's about to float off if Hanbin wasn't pressing against him. "Gonna interrogate me about my exes?"

"Only the human ones," Hanbin returns just as easily, his free hand finding Yunhyeong's thigh. "Tell me _everything_."

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

It's been a while since Yunhyeong's had anything resembling a night out—between the spirits and his editor's penchant for early meetings and, well, Junhoe's general existence, going out for drinks had mostly been relegated to highschool reunions where booze was generally present to stimulate conversations. Not that Yunhyeong attended many, anyway. He’d been too quiet back then to really make it onto any list of invitees for reunions that actually mattered.

The bar that Hanbin takes him to is a quiet hole-in-the-wall place with polished floors and a touch of dim lighting, complete with a live band playing quietly in the corner, though Yunhyeong's finding it a little hard to focus on the music when Hanbin has his hand on the small of his back all the way to their booth.

"If you're planning to get me drunk," Yunhyeong says, propping his chin up on a hand, "it's probably going to work."

"Lightweight?" Hanbin takes the menu stand from the table and scans through it quickly. "I guessed as much."

"… _Hey_." Yunhyeong frowns, though he doesn't really know why he's taking offense when it's a hundred percent true anyway. _Junhoe_ could probably drink him under the table. "It's not my fault I didn't have the college experience."

"I used to throw up after a drink in college, too," Hanbin muses, abandoning the menu, and his hand wanders closer and closer until it closes around Yunhyeong's, like he can't stand a second without touching him. "Woke up in a bathroom once with no recollection of whatever the hell happened."

"My sister makes me drink every. Single. New. Year," Yunhyeong punctuates dramatically, recalling the times Eunjin had shoved a glass of soju into his hand and then kept refilling it like it was her job. "Don't like the taste of it. And I like hangovers even less."

"Then let’s keep it to one glass for you, nothing heavy, so you don't hate me after this." The grin he flashes is light and teasing and Yunhyeong can't help himself—he leans across the table to kiss him. "What was that for?"

"Brownie points," Yunhyeong announces, "for being considerate." But Hanbin looks genuinely surprised and pleased, a look that Yunhyeong decides is good on him. He gets up and leaves for the bar to place their order, coming back with two drinks—something tall and colourful for Yunhyeong, and something stout and serious for himself.

The band switches over in the time Hanbin's gone, and a leaner man takes centerstage this time, perches himself on top of a barstool. The first strums of the song start and Yunhyeong feels, strangely enough, like he could be in a dream.

"Isn't it rude to check other people out while you're on a date?" comes Hanbin's voice from next to him. The seat depresses as Hanbin slides in again, handing Yunhyeong his tall, colourful drink, presumably something with only slightly more alcohol than orange juice.

"You never said it was a date," Yunhyeong retorts, sipping the drink and barely tasting the bittersweet liquid. He's distracted by everything—the curve of Hanbin's hand, solid against his glass, his earrings catching the light each time a car outside their window zooms past, a small glimmer of Yunhyeong's cherry chapstick on the corner of his mouth.

"Man takes other man out to a bar. Dresses like this," Hanbin says, gesturing at his dark button-up and slacks. "And you _still_ don't think it's a date? Wow."

"Maybe I just need a little more convincing." He takes another sip of his drink, and then another until half of it is gone. Hanbin's staring at his face, at his lips, and liquid courage courses through Yunhyeong's veins. He thinks of the way Hanbin had seen a blue sky and thought of him. "Something more concrete."

"If you're asking me to pay you, I don't think I'll be comfortable with this arrangement."

Yunhyeong makes a noise halfway between a scoff and a laugh, lifts a hand to brush his knuckles against Hanbin's cheek and Hanbin stills, suddenly, like he's holding his breath, like he's a little scared. "Can I tell you a secret?"

Hanbin nods mutely and Yunhyeong leans into to kiss him fiercely, tasting bitter whiskey on his tongue.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

He can tell Junhoe has a burning question to ask because this is the third time he's passed by Yunhyeong's desk, looking very much like the time he ate some really bad kimbab.

"If you have something to say," Yunhyeong tells him, taking off his glasses and setting them next to his phone, "spit it out."

"So are you guys dating now?" Junhoe bursts out without missing a beat.

"Who, me?" Yunhyeong asks, snickering when Junhoe makes a point of rolling his eyes. "I guess. Yeah."

Junhoe makes a displeased humming sound and drags a chair from the dining table to spin it around, pressing the back of it to Yunhyeong's table, his face already schooled into interrogation mode. "I don't like it."

"You don't like me dating, or you don't like Hanbin?" Yunhyeong questions, trying not to let the amusement bleed through. None of his relationships ever last very long—it's hard to stay honest and open with communication when you're essentially a spirit magnet. "I'm guessing Hanbin."

"He's different now," Junhoe grumbles. "Too serious. And he doesn't have that stupid white snapback on all the time. Who _is_ he, even?"

"Is this because he made you take out the trash—"

"— _no_ ," Junhoe interjects emphatically. "Do I look that petty?"

"Honest answer?"

"Fuck you, hyung," Junhoe spits as Yunhyeong laughs, closing his laptop.

"I like him," Yunhyeong says, as if trying the concept out aloud. They'd stayed up talking that night and gotten a cab at closing time and they’d stumbled, drunk and giggly, into Yunhyeong's bed, far too small for two grown men. The word _like_ seemed a little too small for what he’d felt when he'd woken up with Hanbin drooling on his chest. "Isn't that the most important part?"

"He's—" Junhoe making gestures with his hands that look a lot like he's trying to strangle the air in front of him "—he's just— he's on my watchlist. I'll be watching him closely."

"I know how to take care of myself," Yunhyeong reminds him laughingly, feeling something warm spread in his chest. Next to him, his phone buzzes and a text from Hanbin pops up: _might have landed a good project. celebratory dinner? promise i won't try and get you naked_. "He knows how to take care of himself." He nods at Junhoe. "All you need is to focus on yourself."

"Just," Junhoe says, with an exasperated sigh, as if Yunhyeong's a stupid teenager who doesn't yet know how the world works, "be careful. We don't really know him."

"No," Yunhyeong agrees, picking his phone up to reply ( _disappointing, expected loftier goals from you, kim_ ), "not yet."

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

Seoul in winter is the wrong season to purchase a scooter, but Yunhyeong does it because it makes it easier to shuttle between his place and Hanbin's new studio apartment.

"Finally," Junhoe had hollered at him on their test drive, "you can stop living in the twentieth century."

The drive to Hanbin's place is a relatively short one, made harrowing only by the fact that Yunhyeong had stubbornly chosen to make some celebratory soup that he now had to transport. But he likes it—likes the wind in his ears, how everything blurs together around him so he doesn't really have to think about what he's seeing. It sets him in a good mood by the time he lets himself upstairs, twirling his keys on his finger.

When he lets himself in, the apartment is quiet except for the soft thrumming of the heater. The television's muted on a gaudy looking cartoon and Yunhyeong catches sight of Hanbin fast asleep on the couch as he's setting his food down on the table. He's curled up in a way that makes his usually tall frame look small, half-buried in loose-leaf papers filled to the brim with his handwriting, and for a brief moment Yunhyeong gets a flash of the kid he once knew. Sometimes he's scared he'll blink and Hanbin will disappear, a mirage of his own making, too good to be true.

He unwinds his scarf slowly, shakes the flakes of snow out of his hair, folds it up and sets it aside. Time seems to move a little slower and every move Yunhyeong takes makes him feel a little like he's walking through water.

"119," says Hanbin from behind him and Yunhyeong laughs, half from the surprise, "I wanna report a breaking and entering."

"Does it count when the thief brings you soup and rice?" He sheds his coat, slowly, pulls off his sweater, too, so all he's in is a worn-out t-shirt with the ghostbusters logo on the front—Junhoe's idea of humour.

"What else doth the thief bringeth?" Hanbin asks. When Yunhyeong turns around, Hanbin's flat on his back with his eyes fixed on him, looking every bit like a lazy cat that knows it’s going to get what it wants. The papers he'd been half-buried in are now on the floor, but Yunhyeong doesn't think he'll get much of a chance to clean them up.

"Mmm, not really my type of dirty talk." He strides in closer, swings a leg over Hanbin's hips, places his hands on his chest, warm under Yunhyeong's cold palms. "How did the meeting go?"

"Good," he answers, eyes dragging slowly from Yunhyeong's face down to his thighs, splayed over Hanbin's belly. The look on his face, Yunhyeong's learnt, is one of _want_. "They didn't even ask me much about my nervous breakdown."

"Tactful," Yunhyeong says, "but you know that it's not a—" His phone chimes loudly with a 32-bit rendition of Smooth Criminal before Yunhyeong can finish his sentence, and it's a mark of how much he wants to be here that he momentarily considers not picking it up. Junhoe doesn't usually call him unless it's an emergency, but then Junhoe's been working with Yunhyeong long enough that he can probably handle it on his own. Right? _Right_?

"Pick it up before you explode," Hanbin tells him, shaking his head as he pushes himself up, though he doesn't make things easier when he slips a hand under Yunhyeong's thigh to help him off.

Junhoe's voice on the other end is hysterical enough that Yunhyeong immediately hears the alarm bells go off in his head. It's a big one, he says, a drunk driver had slammed his truck into a restaurant. In front of him, Hanbin's already shaking out Yunhyeong's scarf, moving to wrap it around his neck, and then disappears into his bedroom, emerging with a coat of his own.

"You don't have to come along," Yunhyeong says, thinking about the mayhem that's about to occur and how, if he pretends for a second, this peaceful bubble has yet to burst.

"But I want to," Hanbin answers, pulling his gloves on. When he cups Yunhyeong jaw, the leather is cool against his skin. "Moral support for you and Junhoe."

He could protest right now, say that Hanbin doesn't know what he's getting himself into, or that it's going to be too much to keep an eye on the spirits and on Junhoe _and_ on Hanbin at the same time. Sites of accidents weren't the best place for a crash course to mediation, and Yunhyeong doesn't thi—

"Stop overthinking it," Hanbin cuts in reassuringly, as though he's read Yunhyeong's mind, "I know what I'm doing. C'mon, put on your coat before Junhoe loses his shit."

The thing is, life turns out in the most unlikely ways. Yunhyeong helps seven spirits that night, watches them disappear into the great beyond. Most of them were young, nowhere near the age where their eulogy would've involved some sentiment of _at least they lived a good life_ to justify their gruesome end. There was a time when Yunhyeong would've carried the weight of their possibilities on his shoulders, like it was his burden to carry. But then Hanbin slips a hand into his, having evidently lost his glove somewhere in the chaos, and squeezes it lightly, asking, "Okay?"

And Yunhyeong thinks he might have finally learned how to let things go.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _all morning it has been raining / in the language of the garden, this is happiness._
> 
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>  
> 
>  
> 
> i. _le mal du pays_ , or [homesick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx6PqX2Fir8)  
> ii. for everyone who trudged through all 20k of this, thank you for reading???¿¿¿???  
> iii. and as always, infinite amounts of gratitude to gerti (@[ikonout](https://twitter.com/ikonout)) whose attention to detail makes it so that no one has to read that hanbin has three hands.  
> iv. [some](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weANwIE1Jos) [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMXTn_WEYsE) that set the #mood.  
> v. lastly, come talk to me @[hyonestly](https://twitter.com/hyonestly)!!!!!

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thanks to gerti for betaing this monster.


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